Find a small company with a founder who loves their team and wants them to be happy. They exist, I assure you. They're not even rare.
I spent most of my career working in companies with <50 employees, and only hit a couple of unpleasant founders. The few large companies that I worked in were always bureaucratic nightmares by comparison.
Small companies won't pay FAANG salaries, but they also won't make you feel like a meaningless cog in a vast unsympathetic, unproductive, machine.
> I spent most of my career working in companies with <50 employees
I’ve worked for 3 companies like that. It was really great if your views aligned with the founder. If they didn’t, you got fucked.
I really enjoyed when a bunch of juniors were fired the day before Christmas because the founder heard them discussing the latest movies they watched and decided that they had bad opinions and shouldn’t work at his company since he’d be embarrassed if his peers heard their tastes. Not hyperbole, direct statements. We referred to it as the Red Christmas at the time.
I believe you got lucky, I don’t find your advice actionable.