Ask HN: How can non-engineers gauge the quality of the engineering team?
Are there things for people to look at when they are joining a company to identify that the engineering team is not as strong as a company is saying?
Good scores on the Joel test normally correlate with a mature engineering team IMHO (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...). The reverse may not be true. Just asked the team how they score on the Joel test.
Also, if the churn is high something is probably bad. Ask around why the last developers quit.
Bear in mind it's very hard to gauge from the outside, even for an engineer.