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1. Observe the leadership style: Observe how leaders communicate and make decisions. You should also pay attention to whether leadership is more hierarchical or collaborative. 2. As a software engineer, there's a lot of engineering and architecture work that the team does. You want to be sure this process is collaborative and people have autonomy, so engineers are allowed to participate and learn, as opposed to it always being done a certain way all the time. 3. Look at the people that work there. Are they happy? That's also very important.

Company (and team) culture affect your morale as an employee. In a good team with good culture, you're more than happy to bring your most authentic self to work and do your best. It's actually beyond the company. It's the team you join. Especially in medium sized to large organisations, two people can join the same company on the same day and have extremely different experiences because they are on different teams. So during the interview you want to make sure that you're asking questions that help you decipher the culture of the team, so that you don't get in and become unhappy.

For a Cloud Computing job interview, prioritize a deep understanding of distributed systems within cloud environments. Master the fundamentals of cloud computing, emphasizing cloud service models and major providers. Learn cloud-native architecture, focusing on microservices, serverless computing, and container orchestration. Learn about designing scalable, reliable, and performant applications for the cloud. Also, demonstrate experience with distributed systems, cloud APIs, and infrastructure-as-code tools.

It's important to learn the fundamentals. The cloud is collection of computers connected by networks, so you should first understand the fundamentals of computing. Learn the key cloud service models, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Get to know the major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, understanding their core services and pricing models. Also learn cloud deployment models such as public, private, and hybrid clouds, and comprehend their respective advantages and use cases. Learn virtualization technologies, containerization (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), and automation tools for efficient cloud management. Learn about cloud security best practices and compliance standards. Learn IAM, encryption, and secure data handling.

Collaboration is key here. Hackathons, events, and other kind of collaborative training programs. You can work with other companies to organize joint training programs. This could involve bringing in experts to conduct workshops.

Exchange programs work really well for this. You can create mentorship programs where experienced cloud engineers from one company can mentor employees from another (and vice versa). This can help with knowledge exchange and people get to learn from real-world experiences at other people's jobs.