Ask HN: How do you estimate the code quality of a company after an interview
4 by markus_zhang | 4 comments on Hacker News.
Hi friends, here is my thought: We all know that for all kinds of programming jobs, or for all jobs that need to write code (even VBA counts), code quality is super important when you are inheriting a huge code base. The problem is: how to estimate it after the interview when they email you an offer? I don't think you get to see the code until you start working there, and albeit you can quit easily during the first few weeks, making the wrong choice puts you into a disadvantage position (just imagine you have 3 offers, you decline two and accept the one with a shit mountain codebase). Some methods I think of: 1) Just asking around. Well it might work, but again your future colleagues might not tell you the truth, or they simply don't know/care about the code quality there. 2) Judging from lead personality. But what kind of personality cares about code quality? 3) Asking about tech stack and especially change of tech stack. This might actually work to some extent. What's your thought?