One of the great things about Joel Spolsky's books is that they are not a series of bullet points. He tells stories, and I for one always find stories to be more useful than adages taken out of context. Sure, they take more time to read, but it's time well-spent. I'll take Joel on Software over Rework any day.
A lot of people probably share the sentiment of Joel > Rework. I think that's because Joel reasons things out and his reasoning is nuanced, consistent, and intellectually honest. The 37s advice writing, more often than not, consists of generalization of simple concepts (that worked for 37s) without analysis of their caveats.
"Interviewing. It is much, much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate. You’re looking for people who are smart, and get things done."
This made me think. I have read lots of things about how to best hire somebody. What are strategies for picking the right company to work for? If there is a shadow of a doubt, don't accept?
1) They should act professional during the the interview. That means starting the interview on time, and being prepared, not just coming in, reading your resume while you wait, and asking whatever questions they can come up with on the fly. It doesn't mean dressing a certain way.
2) They should ask you difficult technical questions, because you want to know that the people you will be working with were smart enough to pass a tough interview.
3) They should welcome difficult questions from you. I'm not necessarily taking about technical questions about their product, but more the way they run their shop.
4) They should not act like they are in a hurry, even if they are.
5) Ideally, they don't have a lot of unplanned turnover.
It depends on how badly you need it. This matters in both directions, but it is a lot more relevant when picking a good place to work: if you can't pay rent next month, you'll probably take a bad gig.
In the hiring direction, "how badly you need it?" is usually not as time-sensitive since adding people to a team effectively lowers productivity at first. However, if for some reason you are trying to grow a team by an order of magnitude, you "need it" pretty badly, so to speak.
