What have you viewed as the "least bad" among employers when looking for work?

Hate them as much as you want, Amazon has the best entry level jobs to ever exist, with amazing benefits if you're permanent and decent benefits if you're not.

That mandatory overtime tho 😬😬😬😬 (it's worth it)

No micromanaging. My boss said: "I don't care how long you take for lunch, just put in your 40 hours and get your projects done on time."

Coming from previous jobs that I had to clock in/out of with strict lunch times, that was mind-blowing. Been working there 3 years now.

actually there's one weird one that I'll put at the top because it might actually apply to the rest of you: everybody has nice pens. not like, fancy fountain pens, just the fancier rollerballs that feel smoother on the paper and the permanent markers with higher quality inks. like papermate inkjoys and real brand name sharpies. its a weirdly good indicator that they aren't cutting corners elsewhere. a pizza party is a one-time expense, like a lovebombing abusive partner who buys you flowers the day after kicking your teeth in. pens are an everyday operating expense, and those costs add up. pens are one of the first things that are gonna get hit when the bean counters start getting their claws into the daily operational costs. good pens means they're investing in the actual everyday working environment.

here were my first thoughts:

good nurse to patient ratio (changes by specialty & facility acuity level)
no mandatory overtime
on-site security who are authorized to remove violent visitors
good health insurance (they all suck but for the most part United bad, anthem good)
no news articles about human rights violations
low staff turnover / multiple nurses who have been there longer than 2 years
when you do a shadow shift nobody is asking why they're staffed so well today

...probably some other stuff I'm not thinking about.

In order.

Employees owned. Community coop. Non-profit Opensource Community or national service related Trade, manufacturing, backend IT related

Those are all attributes that push me to feeling better about the work personally. The exact opposite of for profit retail experience

Probably add a red flag too. If career progression means management. Management is just a skill set, if getting promoted to that position is the only way "up" then you can expect a bunch of people who rose to the level of their incompetence in charge looking for people like them to promote under them.

Companies where there are long tenured employees outside of management is my ultimate green flag. If you can figure out who is in management by drawing names out of a hat by senority and stop when you run through 80% of managers without hitting a single IC then you should be aware that ICs have very little say in how the company is run so half the managers are there out of frustration because they needed to become a manager to enact change.

Screw "say in how the company is run", I'll settle for the money. Pay me and I will work. Pay me more and I will keep working. My current employers understood the assignment, I still have a long career progression without going into management.
What's IC mean in this context?
- Individual contributor - a term for everyone who isn't a manager.
- Jargon that needs to be dereferenced when it's used the first time. Am I right?
My last interview, current company, the average tenure of all the people I asked was ~7 years. I would also ask why they've been there so long.

This last job search was between Amazon and Meta. I was at the offer stage of both. Then a third smaller company came in. I'm pretty sure the third could have been a whaling company and it would have been a less bad option. Was very happy to turn both of them down.

Of all the things that didn't happen, this one happened the least.
- Yeah, it's not like a software dev would interview with 2 big software companies, right?
- K. Don't need you to believe me. They asked I answered.

One thing I've learnt to look for is a kind of company that is not open or active 24/7, something that runs on daytime office hours only. Helps to cut down the possibilities for after hours work bullshit happening.

Or, if the business is 24/7, make sure they have an explicit on-call policy with designated shifts. (e.g. who is allowed to call you, what is the expected response time, is an issue disruptive enough that it needs resolving at 3am on a holiday, etc.)

My current job (IT for a non-profit research facility) pays a sweet daily bonus just for having my phone on me, even if I don't get called over a week, plus double overtime pay when I do get called afterhours. I've had 13 shifts over the past couple years, and was called only 7-8 times, 3 of those on the same weekend for the same issue (couldn't make a permanent fix until the following Monday).

In any other job, I definitely wouldn't accept a manager or random coworkers sending me messages out of the blue on a weekend and getting mad when I don't respond.

Education. I’d be a history professor if I wasn’t averse to getting the accreditation. Next up, housing the unhoused. But I have no skill for that, whereas I have a passion for history and might reach a couple of students.

Probably civil service or non-profit.

I swore I would never work for a large corp ever again after I went non-profit. The culture is totally different and not soul crushing.

I work in the public sector (not at the federal level) and it's great, but uhhhh. I'm sure we'll be fine for a while where I am, but I'm not as enthusiastically pushing it as I was. But goddamn is it nice not working to make some asshole rich.

Ideologically, I thought the "least bad" for me would be academic research. One year at an institution with a really toxic research culture later, and I'm thinking of either a local small-business or employee co-op or running a small business based on my special interest so... yeah.

working academic research is awesome. or it would be if it paid adequately.

Their offering of junk food in the break room as a "benefit".