I'm reading The Daily WTF archives and especially those stories about IT-related companies which have a completely wrong approach of software development, the job of a developer, etc.

Some stories are totally horrible: a company don't have a local network for security reasons, another one has a source control server which can only be accessed by the manager, etc. Add to it all those stories about managers who don't know anything about their work and make stupid decisions without listening to anybody.

The thing is that I don't see how to know if you will be employed by such company during an interview. Of course, sometimes, an interviewer tells weird things which gives you an idea that something goes very wrong with the company (in my case, the last manager said I should work 100% of my time through Remote Desktop, connected to on an old and slooooow machine, because "it avoids several people to modify the same source code"; maybe I should explain him what SVN is).

But in most cases, you will be unable to get enough information during the interview to get the exact image of a company.

So how to avoid being employed by this sort of companies?

• I thought about asking to see some documents like documentation guide or code style guidelines. The problem is that I live in France, and here, most of the companies don't have those documents at all, and in the rare cases where those documents exist, they are outdated, poorly written, never used, or do force you to make things that don't make any sense.

• I also thought about asking to see how programmers actually work. But seeing that they have dual screens or "late-modern-artsy-fartsy furnishings" doesn't mean that they don't have people making weird decisions, making it impossible to work there.

Have you been in such situations? What have you tried? Have it worked?