I have seen mentions on SO of companies with low Joel Test Scores.
Does anyone work (in a software developer role) for a company with a zero Joel Test Score? This excludes cases where you're the owner of the company :-)
If so, what are your reasons for continuing to work for that company?
I've worked fir a company with score of 1 for two years. Although the conditions were tough and the pay was bad I had enjoyed working there for a short while.
The reason was that I could choose what technology to use as long as I got a(mostly) working product and I got to play with cool devices and learn cool technologies.
I left that company when I understood that in order to become a better developer I need to find another place of work.
I went to a company that had a zero (maybe a 1 with #9). It was scary but after a year or so we knocked off 1-4 (the you don't have these?? set) & 10 (testers). That was followed by #8 (quiet conditions). I was working on the culture change with #5 (fixing bugs first) but management's desire to keep building on shaky foundations was too much and I started my exit.
I found myself once in a company so bad, that it only had more than zero, because it had computers.
I was hired to develop systems, specially a very nice one, in idea, that I really tried to implement. They were so of the scale, that once I came to one of the guys and started to show nhibernate, he looked into my eyes and asked me: "I mean really, is there anyone who uses it?", then I gave up totally, i mean, the world, my life... just stoped believing in a higher being... the flying spaguetti monster was destroid...
Oh! the humanity... !!!
I was demised after a total of 1.5 months of work, because the obvious necessary changes that they needed, and i tried to show and implement...
I worked one place with a zero score and left as soon as possible (well I did wait until I had another job). I worked another place that would have scored a 1 (I do miss my private office). I stayed there to get the chance to learn a database technology I wanted to work in and left when I had the requisite experience.
I think we have about 2 right now, but its a new team in an organization that doesn't really do SW (until now). I'm working on changing this, but its hard.
My worksite is about a 1 - we officially have testers. Nothing else is official or universal. In practice, the projects I work on are about a 4 because I set up my own version control system, bug tracker, and automated build scripts.
I worked at a 0. While all of the things were quite bad, perhaps the worst was the quiet working conditions. Developers were required to answer the phones when they rang and you weren't allowed to put headphones on for this reason. Needless to say, it was a terribly frustrating experience.