What are your expectations of an ideal work-spot/ professional environment?
Top criteria for me would include:
Challenging work (Just the right amount too!)
Ownership
Good Team
Good Manager
Flexibility
Proximity to home (The last two for work/life balance)
Skip to content
Nourish-n-Cherish 
– Small team
– Smart team
– Flat hierarchy
– People who are in a similar phase of their life. For instance, I can’t work with a team full of 20 year olds any more, they can do 100 hr weeks easily :).
I think that should do it.
Same for me too.
Challenging work is top most. else life would be hell!
Cutting edge work, that makes a difference in the world.
I like Anand’s points too.
sk
So that is the difference, smart teams will figure out how to create challenging work and move on. You don’t necessarily have to start there.
May be I am too old now :), but I realize most work in software development is ‘same old, same old’ [other than few paradigm changing stuff].
In fact, I would even trade off challenging work to work where what I do has a huge impact on the business. I think that gives you a lot more fulfillment.
There is this pretty interesting book called ‘Founders at work’ by Jessica Livingston. It is worth its weight in gold. Check it out. Great stories there.