Flexibility. It is a hard 8-5? Or can I swing it either way an hour or two if need be?
Commute. It needs to be a reasonable drive in the morning. Work already takes enough of my day, I don't want to sacrifice the rest to the gods of traffic.
Pay. It needs to be reasonable. Obviously.
Benefits. This gets the honor of picking up any slack in the pay department.
#1 people, as I want to work with people who care about what they are doing, and want to work with people I like working with. My strategy for that is to ask for private discussion with future colleague before accepting the job. Then I ask what they like in the job and what they don't like, how they work, what is boring and what is not, why they stay / why they would leave.
#2 continuous improvement : I want everyone to be concerned by documentation, automation, best practices, fixing root cause of issues rather than consequences. I want to work with people who have sufficient balls to say 'No' to stupid orders and take the time to improve something rather than using quick and dirty solutions. I want to see rights decisions being taken.
#3 focus: a good place to work is a place where we can concentrate, and where context switching and interruptions are avoided by everyone.
#4 flexibility, transparency and trust : I want to be able to work without wasting too much time with processes, interruptions, lack of permissions etc. a place where we can trust people enough to give them the ability to give their best and have control on the how-to. everyone should be able to see the important decisions. There should not be room for information hiding and obscurity. People should be able to tell what is not ok without being afraid to be fired
#5 strategy : a place where strategy is clear, everyone work together and have a common language, a common set of best practices they follow, the know why they do stuff, they are all aware of company decisions and strategy, why some decisions are taken, and decisions make sense (no need to waste time and money on useless process and tools that are counter productive)
#6 learning : a good place to learn new hard and soft skills
#7 extra advantages : laptop, internet, home working, transportation, pay, trainings etc help to decide between multiple jobs opportunities
Flexibility is #2. Prefer to work in the office over remote, but like to have the option for either. That way I can see the family a couple times a year and use my vacation to actually vacation.
#3, since I prefer the office and live in Los Angeles is commute.
#4 is pay.
Benefits are basically the same everywhere. But I wish Kaiser insurance was more popular here...