What sucks about your company's dev environment/philosophies?

6 points by mattwick 12 years ago | 12 comments

Our company, Kareer.me, helps companies showcase their culture, workspace, team, opportunities, and more. We're looking to add something new just for developers.

Many of us have been duped into working at companies that are painful to write code for.

What things would you like to know about a company's development environment/philosophies before even considering a job?

bill_v 12 years ago |

- Who will I interact with most on a daily basis? (other devs, qa, ops, manager, customers?) - Is everyone in same office/building or are team members remote? If remote, what strategies and tools are in place to make it seamless? - Who is on a "team"? (just other devs? cross-functional? if so, does it include QA, BA, UX project management, ops or product management)? How do teams interact? - How is development organization success measured? - How is professional & personal development addressed by the organization?

- What is the platform? What tools are used? Is there integration between issue/task tracking & source code & builds? Using CI? - What is process/budget for procuring or updating additional productivity/developer tools and hardware? - Is there a development/QA/staging environment? Who maintains those?

- What development process is used? How long are cycles? How is it measured? Who is responsible for the process and the various activities in the process? - How does development process integrate with support/delivery/ops processes? - How is product roadmap and direction set? How are changes handled? - Who is responsible for overall architecture & UX? Who makes trade-off decisions? - How can I evaluate if I am being productive & effective in the organization? - Who will be most likely to give me feedback about code, features, contributions?

Re: testing comment - Ask "What is your definition of quality"? Is it related to meeting expected behaviors or do they use a narrow metric like bug count / severities? How are expected behaviors of the system established? Via written documentation, team discussions, etc? How are bugs reported, triaged, resolved? Via tool like Github, Jira, or TFS, or via Excel/email/verbal? Do bug reporters have access to tools for screen capture? Do application logs provide sufficient information?

svanzoest 12 years ago |

- Open Source Stance

- Links to public software contributions - API Documentation

- Delivery/Deployment methodology (shrink wrap, separate releng process, continuous delivery)

- Who is on call for production, process or code issues?

- What software code metrics are tracked/graphed?

- What process metrics are tracked/graphed?

- What is the companies take on security?

- How are tasks assigned to engineers?

- Do you have a separate tools/devops/process team?

- Is there a separate project management department?

- Does the company contribute to meetups, local communities?

- Who goes to conferences, career training sessions?

- Is there internet access at the office?

- What is the office setup like? cubes, desks, offices? standing desks?

- What are the office amenities? snacks, dinner, drinks, showers, gym, yoga, surf, video games?

mattwick 12 years ago | |

Awesome! Thanks for the super thoughtful list! Some of the things you mentioned are covered on our profiles, like the office amenities and pictures of the office, but I love a lot of your other suggestions! Thanks again!

fredb001 12 years ago |

The Joel Test

Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you make daily builds? Do you have a bug database? Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Do you use the best tools money can buy? Do you have testers? Do new candidates write code during their interview? Do you do hallway usability testing?

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

BenLin 12 years ago |

The relationship between developer and project manager! Is the manager "controlling" the developer, or assisting the developer? Basically, the answer of the question defines the culture of the company.

mattwick 12 years ago | |

Thanks Benlin. Good point.

camdesigns 12 years ago |

Code Quality (How horrible is your code?), Will my attempt to push initiatives be welcomed or rejected?, Frameworks in Use, Architecture, use of OOP / OOD, Scaling considerations, Direction of the company (This can influence the way we build things, Some stake holders do not see this, through thier push to iterate), will it be fun to work there? and is there Redbull?

rolandal 12 years ago |

- Product Management: style/agile/waterfall

- Iterations: how often do they ship/what does QA cycle look like

- Pair Programming/Code Review: how does the company keep everyone in the loop?

mrdl 12 years ago |

- Deployment Process

- Project Management (Agile?)

- Testing (Process, Tools)

- Code Reviews

- Current Libraries

mattwick 12 years ago | |

Thanks! I wonder if companies would be willing to share their use of APIs as well. A few of our developers are nuts for API integration. Libraries might be a sensitive subject for companies to display, but would definitely be cool to know.

masukomi 12 years ago |

How important testing is to them. Many "agile" companies don't actually incorporate testing in any meaningful way.

mattwick 12 years ago | |

Awesome input. I think a lot of companies overlook testing as a valuable part of their overall development plan. Most just want product pushed out the door. I'm curious as to how we might be able to get an objective measure of this from the company. Perhaps asking for specific methodology, tools, etc?