Joel's article is good. Sadly, few folks are able to replicate the environment at Fog Creek, and few of us have his candidate pool, either. He flys people to NYC and has them picked up in a limo at the airport for their interviews... for INTERNSHIPS. His interns get paid more than many full time developers. He has a network of the best CS professors all over the country and they funnel their best students to him.

The rest of us have to make do with what is found on Monster and CareerBuilder, and the hiring realities are sadly not the same. Joel's advice, while awesome if you have the candidate pool, would leave most companies completely understaffed because Joel's test would weed out 90% of applicants.

J.Ja