Find a company using the tools you're interested in. Look for a strong commitment to training and education. What's current now is outdated six months from now. Ask your prospective employee whether the company has training money for items such as conventions, books, and tuition reimbursement, Wenzel recommends. Ask if the company has a way to measure quality.
Good companies use accepted ways to measure the quality of their work.
They rely on extraordinary efforts of employees to pull all-nighters or work a week straight. 90 percent of custom development ends in failure, meaning it never gets delivered, doesn't do what it's supposed to, or is over budget or overdue. An accepted way to measure quality can spare you those all-nighters. Certainly, there are those techies who consider it a badge of honor to code all night. But Mike Blain, a spokesman with the WashTech union in Washington, recommends that interviewees at least ask about overtime expectations.