"Smart and gets things done".

rabidrat · on Aug 1, 2016

And "not an asshole".

spitfire · on Aug 1, 2016

Yes, but this is a quantitative way to measure those things.

"Smart and gets things done" leaves the door for touchy feely interpretations, which leaves the door open for gaming the system.

dragonwriter · on Aug 1, 2016

> Yes, but this is a quantitative way to measure those things.

Well, except that only one of the three parts suggested is clearly quantitative.

pnathan · on Aug 1, 2016

He must be smart, he nodejs'd the mongo with haskell#! INSTAHIRE.

It's actually possible to model smarts and turn out bad work without actually being smart. Joel's phrase is intuitively obvious and subtly open to deep abuse.