its very difficult to get an honest read from interviewers and hiring manager. the less functional they are the more desperate they are to turn things around.

its clearly not a hard and fast rule, but one thing that I've found is the things people and companies stress are often the things that they aspire to be, and are directly in contradiction with the way things actually are.

a company that stresses how well the deal with 'technical debt', is often one thats drowning in legacy code.

'productive collaboration' might mean a systemic culture of mistrust and people going their own way for no reason.

a company that says they are hiring you to present game-changing ideas for consideration is likely to put you in a corner and ignore you.

but I have alot of baggage :)