[dilippkumar]

Back when in-person interviews were a thing, I’d use the opportunity to just look at the office space.

Specific red flag signals:

1. Dominated by Windows

2. Too many people in formals

3. Nobody wears badges (and other indicators of a lax security policy)

4. Old/worn out office furniture

5. Low resolution displays

6. Old laptops

7. No evidence of people collaborating or chatting at a microkitchen etc.

[swatcoder]

Fascinating!

Depending on the size and age of the company, most of those hint towards a product-focused organization that often cultures careful, reliable engineers. It might not be fun or flashy, but there's good odds that a place like that knowns how to build their product and does a consistent job of it. They're often a great place for senior engineers to settle down and focus on low-drama productivity and for junior engineers to witness durable best practices in action.

[silverquiet]

I like working at places small enough that we don't need badges because everyone just knows each other. I remember way back at an old company (that was quite large by the time I joined) learning that someone had quit rather than wear a badge as the company "grew up". I thought it was nuts back then, and I still would be willing to make that compromise myself, but I get it a lot more these days.

[Turing_Machine]

> 6. Old laptops

Salesmen have Mac Pros or fully decked-out gaming rigs, programmers are still on Pentiums.

[bruce511]

What's this "office space" you're talking about? :)

But seriously, we'd fail 1, 3 (we've never had anything like badges to wear), 4 (some of it is old, not too much us worn out though - chairs get replaced, desks are pushing 25 or more now), 5 (every one, including receptionist has multiple monitors but they're standard 300dpi), 6 (depends what you mean by old), probably 7 as well as most folk are remote now.

I guess we're not for you.

On the up side we dress very informally.