Following on from this, a good lesson I have learned is to try to work for profitable companies. You want the $ profit per employee to be as high as possible. I

Following on from this, a good lesson I have learned is to try to work for profitable companies. You want the $ profit per employee to be as high as possible. I have worked for companies that struggled to make a profit, and guess what they underhire and underpay. I have worked for companies that make good profits and they hire just right and pay nice salary or bonuses. The follow-on from this is to try to work for companies with good recurring revenue models that are efficiently run. Warning signs are companies that rely too much on one off big sales instead of a broad base of customers. Also another problem is consultancies who are hiring out your time and need you to be 100% billable. The other warning sign is very small companies that are bootstrapping with tight owners who want to have lots of potential upside in the future by exploiting employees to make them do the work of many people in the early days while giving no little or no equity. Read up on HN and blogs about peoples experience with this, there is a lot written about it.