How to find a good employer

I will say this post is going to come out as if I'm trying to boast or show off, I really hope most people understand that's not the point of why I'm asking for advice here.

Most of you in the tech industry (especially in the Bay Area) realize we aren't suffering from the same economic downturn and jobless issues as the rest of the world. Our world is ripe with opportunity, but it's a lot of hard work, and a lot of companies will do or say anything to lure us in.

I would say I've been a victim of this. After several years of being successful at a mid-sized company, I started seeing talent trickle out the door (bosses, colleagues, VPs, CxOs) for better opportunities. I decided to take a look myself and saw that the industry was full of neon signs and flashy banners.

I joined one of these high flying, well funded start-ups that promises insane amounts of rewards, great learning experience, incredible growth opportunity and best of all, family like culture where everyone tries to help each other. It was everything but this... months into the role (I was employee # in the single digits), I started realizing we were having issues growing past employee #10. Most of the problem seem to stem from things like location, industry, but then came the hard sell. I started hearing interviewers literally start telling lies about company culture, life-balance, opportunities, ...

I left that mess for an older/significantly larger company, hoping the culture would be established, reputation is known in the tech community, etc. Wrong again. The promises of interesting work and startup like feel translated to "lots of work to make investors happy and politics up the wazoo". Being from a startup, my natural inclination was to make sure we delivered on time. At this big company, it often translated to "If you don't think we can make it on time, you must speak up so you take the brunt of the blame. If you do pull this off, you're going to have to do parts of all of our work along with yours." Stupid me did the latter, the team got the praise... good times for all, but after a few years of that nonsense, I don't think I can take this any longer. I secretly was hoping by doing all this work, I could rise the ranks quickly to stick it to some of these guys, I ended up seeing them climb the ladders quicker (perhaps cause they had more free time for presentations).

Back to the point where I would love some honest advice;

What are some good ways to find out what a company culture is like? I've been reading on GlassDoor, I've looked at the Fortune Magazine rankings, I've read about Zappos and actually recently phone interviewed but decided I don't want to move to Vegas, so the conversation died there.

But I'm worried, every time I talk to a company, I am worried that I'm getting that same sales pitch that I was so morally against at my own past employer. At the end of the day, a few hours won't tell me much about the people I'll be working with. What to do??? Help...