I do not trust people when they use culture as a selling point. I made the mistake once, and did meet some great people, but I don't see a single one of them regularly. We ended up having a temporary job and basically just shared mutual trauma. I tried to stay up with the escapee Slack channel, but, it feels more like a support group for people who fled the same cult.
With that being said, I've made some of my best friends in boring coding jobs that only promised me money in exchange for work. It's funny now that people I'm friends from other jobs have met and mixed, that I don't even remember who I worked with where or what the hell we even did.
I can testify—from non-tech job at the service industry—that great work culture and fun colleagues can be a dangerous venue to be exploded by your bosses.
I was working with awesome people and had tons of fun as a particular tourist resort exploded in popularity (and revenue) while us workers only saw union minimum wage increases along a massive work stress with the increased work. We all justified still working there because we had fun with our work buddies, which was promptly exploited by upper management that had us work more for less money.
The moral of this story is: Don’t get blinded by good work culture. We still have our rights and demands as workers.
With that being said, I've made some of my best friends in boring coding jobs that only promised me money in exchange for work. It's funny now that people I'm friends from other jobs have met and mixed, that I don't even remember who I worked with where or what the hell we even did.