Evaluating a company from head to toe can be very hard during the interview process or even the first week of work, because you only see the tip of the iceberg.

Evaluating a company from head to toe can be very hard during the interview process or even the first week of work, because you only see the tip of the iceberg. I've been in many places where there is complacency to update the tech stack, or fragmented communication (imagine working right next to another programmer who has not heard anything about the project your manager gave you, or someone stops coming to work and later the management casually tells you they're fired). I don't work right now (but currently looking) and I left the last job quickly due to disagreement on terms, so I don't know if my answer to your question would be very helpful to you. I was hired as a telecommute contractor for a small web development agency that just set up business about 2 months ago. They had three or four other programmers also telecommute (I can't exactly remember, only really worked with one during my short time there). First, the good stuff- their stack and development setup is very sound for the most part. Their work looked well managed on a technical level. Projects are divided among other remote developers using Gitlab. All bugs and tasks are tracked there. Most client projects use modern frameworks such as Laravel and React. We are all encouraged to use their Vagrant dev environments with virtual machines, so everyone's on the same pace. It's the most modern approach I've experienced in web dev career (which doesn't say much, my other employers were lagging behind). Now for the bad- business billing practices that didn't quite sit right to me as a contractor. Having worked for web agencies before, I'm familiar with process of billing clients. Previously, I'm always the one making the time estimates, if the manager expects them. However, they just threw me into a project without much input and expected me to take its estimates (given by their lead developer) and bill according to what he estimated. Also was expected to be present online for 35 hours but not being able to bill for all 35. I filled out a W-9, identified as a sole proprietorship. I felt like I was controlled more like an employee, one who the company isn't paying taxes for. Plus, the business owner didn't even give me a work-to-hire agreement to sign. He actually said "we don't do contractor agreements". So all put together, it sounded like an attempt leverage me into a very bad deal. That's how we broke it off, he accused me of being unprofessional attitude and didn't take well to my "f* ck you, pay me" approach that freelance contractors are known to defend themselves with. I never had to take that stance before, as all other clients I've contracted for paid on a more sensible hourly basis (and give actual contracts to sign).