My company has been doing a lot of team shuffling lately. In the flux I've been thinking about what sort of work I want to be doing (while working for someone else at a med-large tech company) and here are a few things I came up with:
Technically-driven: Are engineers on the team making decisions about what to build given team goals and business strategy, or merely how to build features handed to them by a product manager? How technical is the leadership team?
Are good engineering practices a matter of course? A negotiation? An afterthought until things start breaking down?
Potential for broad impact: What percentage of our customers customer are likely to benefit from this work? Am I building something that will make life easier for everyone on one of our internal teams? That will help the engineering org get shit done more quickly with less risk?
How powerful of a microscope will I need to find evidence of this work in our next earnings statement?
Success that scales with technical execution: Poor technical execution can sink any project, but how soon do the diminishing returns of great execution kick in? If everything is delivered quickly without bugs or performance issues, would incrementally better technical work make a difference?
How high is the bar, and does it pay to go beyond it?