i don't care about most of the questions being raised here.
a slow process to get changes accepted, long build cycles, bad legacy code, irrational business decisions, whatever.
what i care about is how the team works together. how supportive the people i get to interact with are. how i can get help when i am stuck. if i can ask dumb questions without repercussions. if people compete or cooperate to solve problems. if they share code ownership. both on the individual and on the team level and beyond etc.
if i am in a team that works well together with a supportive manager or leader then i don't care what we are working on. as long as our superiors feel that we are contributing something, even if the end result is nonsense, i'd rather do that than suffer people who are unfriendly or uncooperative or bother each other in other ways, while working on something that saves human lives.
I've worked at a place like you describe. Supportive team, cooperation, understanding, etc. Despite whatever disagreements it was pretty great. For about 2 years.
Then the stuff like irrational business decisions, difficulty getting people on board to address issues, all this institutional inertia, people saying no to everything that could possibly improve things internally. It weighed down so much that I just couldn't handle working there anymore.
> “…i'd rather do that than suffer people who are unfriendly or uncooperative…”
I assume if you had interview questions to root out cooperative groups you would have shared.
So maybe the next question would be, What management or leadership practices are indicative of a better group dynamic?
Otherwise, in my experience, the group dynamic is an interpersonal dynamic— the result of quality of work the group achieves and the synergies of individuals in that process—unpredictable.
to be honest, how to discover these issues in an interview is really the question. i have no idea what to ask to get that that. i mean, asking if i'll get help from my team mates is surely going to be answered with yes, whether it is true or not. same if dumb questions are ok. etc. i think you'll really have to spend a day with the team to get an even just an idea.
at best in a coding interview i can find out if the interviewer is helpful when i am stuck there. or as in one interview i had, the fact that i was allowed to do the tests in a language that i was familiar with but nobody else in the company knew, at least showed that they were open minded and would accept me as an experienced programmer despite not being as experienced in the language they were using.
a slow process to get changes accepted, long build cycles, bad legacy code, irrational business decisions, whatever.
what i care about is how the team works together. how supportive the people i get to interact with are. how i can get help when i am stuck. if i can ask dumb questions without repercussions. if people compete or cooperate to solve problems. if they share code ownership. both on the individual and on the team level and beyond etc.
if i am in a team that works well together with a supportive manager or leader then i don't care what we are working on. as long as our superiors feel that we are contributing something, even if the end result is nonsense, i'd rather do that than suffer people who are unfriendly or uncooperative or bother each other in other ways, while working on something that saves human lives.