> how can you recognize companies such as your friend's

The signs I've picked up so far:

  - Privately owned by the founders (engineers)
  - A sense of carefulness when hiring
  - Few employees quit the company at all
  - Either entirely engineer-run or a few soft-skilled workers with high EQ and social status

When the founders are a family, things get a little weird, because the family weirdo gets tolerated.

As others have said:

- The people you speak with have been at the company for a long time

- The fairness and quality of the interview process (especially w.r.t. the tech screen)

If multiple people you speak with have been with the company for more than 10 years, it's a great sign. And if the interview is really high quality and fair (such that it is an accurate representation of your skills), it's a really great sign for company quality in the intangibles.

The company I just joined is like this, and I can totally understand why people don't leave to try to continue up the total comp pyramid elsewhere.

I’m Danish so this might not apply to an American context, or even a non-Danish context. I’ve been on the hiring side of things a few times, and I’ve worked in a lot of different organisations, and what I personally look for these days is companies which let you interview them as much as they interview you. This shows that they are looking for someone to be the right fit and that they know this process goes two ways.

I had an offer recently where it was online, it had gone through one of those ridiculous LinkedIn recruiters and it had been completely “missold” (not sure what the English word for misleading a “sale” is) to me. I figured this out after about 5 minutes of me asking them questions about their place and the work they wanted me to do, at which point I flat out said something along the lines of “I think I’m the wrong fit” to which they agreed, but they wanted to offer me another type of job in architecture and management. I didn’t want that, but the process of them being very open to me interviewing them helped us both out immensely in not picking each other.

It’s obviously only something you can really engage in if you don’t “need-need” a job.