[dvtrn]

Is there some magical keyword or ‘tell’ that you’ve zeroed in on and want to share with the rest of us when looking at a job ad to tell if it’s a “code assembly line” or not before applying?

From the rest of your comments you seem pretty confident and specific about not having these problems, so I’m curious to know what’s in your secret sauce.

[vogt]

I don’t have magic to share and certainly have taken on bad jobs I regretted signing on to, but for one, I always look for some degree of humanized speech in the job listings. So what I mean by that is not so much fluff about how great the company is and how big the mission is, and more about “we’re looking to add X people who are good at Y”. But most of all, just simply job descriptions that feel like they weren’t churned out by a machine trained to hunt for “3 years of python”.

Also I like to see that engineering managers are the ones doing recruiting if it’s a company that is not Google sized, or at least a recruiter who specializes in engineering. I don’t trust that the “Head of talent” shares the same motivators that get me out of bed In the morning. An engineering manager might not either, but I feel safer betting in that direction.

My two cents, YMMV, mine certainly has