Ask HN: Trade-offs of the best teams / places you ever worked for?

I'm curious about the trade-offs folks have preferred in their workplaces or teams over the years, and why they made sense at the time - i.e. you were single / underpaid / started a family / remote / autonomy / etc.

Over 8 years, at 4 different companies of various sizes...every place I've worked at had some grating issue(s), I've just learned which ones I'm willing to deal with.

A few for myself:

- I've come to accept that impactful teams often deal with ~50% interrupt-driven activities due to top-down mandates or fire-fighting. Real users, real value, real pain.

- Everyone pulls their own weight, but the annual raise isn't as high. Being the big fish in a small pond has diminishing returns - I might get a fat raise every year but the stress from being forever resigned to all the stuff nobody else can or wants to do is unsustainable.

- Team does not ask algorithmic puzzles (i.e. leetcode, epi) questions. I just don't have the energy to practice studying for them anymore, and hate asking them to people even more. However, I will say that doing so at one point in my career literally doubled my income, nevermind that the test taking skills I developed had no effect on my job performance. I probably left a lot of money on the table by not having tons of offers at once.