Small ones, or ones that are very focused on making money.

> How do I select for them when interviewing?

Ask the people who interview you what they work on and why, then avoid the ones where the "why" doesn't connect back to something useful.

> Also, how do I know that _I'm_ not the one who's wrong?

You don't, not immediately. In the end you can only look at the results over the medium/long term.

I love the idea of working for a startup, but I want to be paid well and avoid too much risk.

From what I know, those goals aren't really compatible with startups.

If it's a government agency, or some other organization where it's possible that they're genuinely stunningly incompetent, I usually ask to see a Git repository. It's shocking how many places either literally don't version control code (including me, on my first team out of university) or can't even handle their branching strategy.

I usually ask a few questions about their management philosophy. A lot of people just immediately say crazy stuff around work hours and Agile.

I'll ask to look at their Jira backlog, or whatever they use. If they've got hundreds of cards in there, something has gone wrong (though this is not a dealbreaker by any means).

But for real, if they can keep a clean repository, that's so highly correlated with general competence that I can basically stop asking questions there. It's also nice because it isn't an aggressive question and you don't have to reveal what you're actually looking for.

And finally, I only interview at places through my network these days. Isn't worth the risk of running into a psychopath manager and having them ruins months of my life.