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On the web, you can find reviews for just about anything. Cars. Restaurants. Plumbers. Vacuum cleaners. If it's a product and/or service, someone has probably posted their opinion about it online, including a detailed analysis of its suction performance on shag carpets in multiple-pet households. There's simply no excuse anymore for being an uninformed consumer.

But for a life-changing decision as huge as switching jobs, there really hasn't been a good way to poll the collective wisdom of the masses about the best places to sling code. Sure, there are annual reports put out by stuffy business magazines listing the supposed best places to work, but they typically read like a who's who of the New York Stock Exchange, and they don't have anything specific to say about software development.

The problem boils down to an imbalance of information in the hiring process. Potential employers know all kinds of things about you, but it's very difficult to glean important information about them. What's communication like inside the organization? Is the development process a good one? Do releases ever ship on time? Does the free coffee resemble motor oil both in taste and viscosity?

For some of this information, you could ask very pointed questions during the interview process, and interview at dozens of places to find out how various companies fare in response to these queries. To really get answers, though, you'd probably have to work at multiple organizations for several weeks apiece, and even then you'd only have only a small slice of the big picture.

But now there's an alternative to doing all the detective work yourself. From the comfort of your neighbor's wireless internet connection, you can go to one web site where the developers on the inside post their honest views about their employers, both the good and the bad. Then, armed with this information, you'll be in a decent position to judge for yourself where you'd like to work.