Hitting the High Notes - Joel on Software

Joel certainly makes some excellent points. Although you can't escape the importance of a good product idea and finding an industry that has a preexisting need for the solution you offer. Not many Netflix start-ups ever worked out because of a lack of need for those solutions. Extra marketing dollars don't even achieve the goal of profitability for companies with excellent products/solutions and the top developers. Where as Netflix didn't need to spend much on marketing to begin with because the service was so great in an industry of customers pissed at movie rental companies and their hefty late fees.

All idea are doomed to never reach their potential without the best developers and creative types to get the job done though.

Joel makes some compelling arguments about why it is important to have great programmers. What he doesn't do, however, is offer any sort of criteria for defining what is "great" vs. what is "mediocre." How do we determine the difference between the two? Naturally, there are going to be programmers that earn reputations within the industry after a few years of turning out quality products, but those are rare and by the time they have such reputations they are already established. How does a potential employer figure out if a young programmer coming out of school is great or average?

And Collin is right on. You can have a bunch of great programmers and if they don't have anything to work on you may as well have a bunch of great tv repairmen working for you. Either way you're not going to end up with anything compelling.

Sean,

That's where human interaction comes into play. In my experience, being good at judging people for what they're worth will help tremendously in this. The great programmers don't just have what it takes to get the job done, but they're passionate as hell to get the job done well. An interview or two with people should give you a proper indication of someone's passion for the job.

The example of Jonathan Ive is a great example for this as well. Ive is incredibly passionate about design, and he's simply one of the best designers in the world, hands down.