It works better flying west to east if staying within the continental U.S. For example, I used to fly SEA-EWR-FLL/MIA-EWR-SEA quite a bit.

I preferred connecting in EWR because the timing worked better, the distance was longer, and the United Club has showers. However, EWR has lots of delays. Houston was another option for some trips (e.g., SEA-IAH-BOS-IAH-SEA) but the connections were often unreasonably long and had me arrive at IAH far too early, in my opinion.