Before accepting a job and *especially* before relocating to a new city for a job:
- Reach out to social media, friends of friends, etc. to find out what ex-employees think of the company.
- Check the company review websites to get a feel for what current and ex-employees think.

You need to determine if the company will help you grow as a person, and boost your career, or will just be destructive to your health and sanity.
- Does it have real HR?
- Does it have opaque/hidden managers? (Self Organizing=Constant Anxiety.)
- Does it crunch constantly?

Other questions you must know the answer to:
- Where does the money *actually* come from?
- Who are the customers?
- Is it on a growth spurt, or is it stagnant?
- What's the firm's end goal? A buyout? Stay independent? Do they even have one?
- What's the turnover like?

- Who is *actually* in charge? The investors, or the execs?

I would avoid:
- High turnover firms, or firms with recent mass layoffs.
- Firms with no clear pathway to profitability or quick buyout (investors get quickly bored).
- Most "self-organizing" firms (it's a sham).

- *Avoid* like the plague companies which require their ex-employees to sign NDA's after they get fired or quit. *Always* ask ex-employees if they were forced to sign an exit NDA. (In many cases, these NDA's are unenforceable and/or illegal.)

- Avoid firms like the plague which publicly sue ex-employees for breaking these unethical/potentially illegal exit NDA's.

- Avoid cities that have very few employers in your field. (You need backups if the company is actually insane.)
- Avoid cities that have companies which are known to illegally limit horizontal movement of employees between companies in the same city.

Above all, trust your instincts. Just because a company is well-known, or "famous", or has a cool product, doesn't mean it's actually a healthy or positive place to work. Destructive companies will drain you like a vampire, and healthy companies will help you grow and be happy.

Another tip, for the larger companies: Large companies outsource various problems or projects to smaller "satellite" firms. Find these satellite firms, and ask their current and ex-employees what they think of the larger company. Their opinions can be invaluable.

A red flag to look for: Avoid cult-companies with cultures that are very polarizing, or extremist. I once took a job at a place with board members who claimed that several individuals in our industry were "crazy". At this firm nearly all ex-coworkers were instantly labeled crazy.

This company was very quick to label a lot of companies as crazy, too.

Turns out this company strongly resembled a high turnover abusive cult.

Another tip: Public "employee manuals" are a massive red flag, no matter how entertaining or well-illustrated they are. I virtually guarantee you that everybody on the inside looks at and talks about the manual in a derisive fashion.

My final tip: How diverse is the company? Does the company discriminate in any way? Note that discrimination can be very subtle at some companies. One company I worked at basically refused to hire people who were overweight or too old, for example.