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I am sorry to hear that this happened to you. I have heard and witnessed many stories like this from my friends, and it is for this reason that I have always be

I am sorry to hear that this happened to you. I have heard and witnessed many stories like this from my friends, and it is for this reason that I have always been wary about long stints. Companies exist to make money, not to manage your career. As you found out, at the end of the day, no one will look out for your career but you. I think posts like this are fundamentally irresponsible and a little bit psychologically manipulative. As a working stiff, you don't want to differentiate between personality types. You are not making a friend. You are allocating a portfolio of resources (your team) towards investments. You have to learn how to compare multiple opportunities against one another based on your own career goals, as well as how to do your due diligence on the health of the company, the industry it is in, the competitive landscape, the organizational topology, really anything that you can research or think about which could help you predict what will happen. And even then, you have to prepare for the unknowns. You have to be prepared to cut your losses if things don't work out, because despite your best efforts to do your research, you really don't know what things are like until you start working at a place. You should not stop your "interviewing" curiosity just because you begin a new role. You should continue observing, soaking in information, social interactions, situations, anything that helps you determine whether now that you're on the inside, you're honestly as confident that things will work out as when you started (things are always rosier before you start because you're getting the pitch). 50 is not too old to learn this skills, but it definitely makes things difficult. I was fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on your perspective) enough to have to learn these things to survive in the first few years of my career, working at some really unsavory companies where I started fast and left fast. It sucked, but I am glad I figured it out then rather than later. When you do long stints at companies, you risk not developing this intuitive sense for when things are going off the rails (or going really well) because you have not exercised it. I wish I could help you go back in time and make different decisions, because it always makes me so sad to read these stories. Good people end up getting screwed over.

manicdee 6y ago
How do you do due diligence though? I worked one job as PC support for a white box manufacturer. They were dabbling in telephony, even to the point of hiring engineers to build custom boxes to handle PSTN to VOIP conversion, leasing fibre from other companies to carry their call traffic. It was cute at the time, apart from the management who were all deadset focussed on saving pennies. Turn off the computer when you go home because those 20 cents a year it costs to run the thing in standby are extra profit! I left that job, that company ended up becoming the third biggest telco in the country. I signed up with another company that was already in the telco space but it turns out the CEO of this one was a clown, at one staff meeting shortly after Apple had released the iPhone 3G he held up the Nokia Navigator and said, “this is the future of phones, that Apple stuff is expensive crap.” That company doesn’t exist anymore (it was bought for scrap value by the third largest telco in the country)
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  Somewhat tautologically, by doing due diligence over and over. Take your former company for example. You see a couple examples of how they operate, but it does seem like frugality is an operating principle they hold dear. Is this a pennywise pound foolish mentality, or is it a mentality that follows from attempting to use resources efficiently to accomplish tasks and reduce waste? Take a look at the latter. The CEO makes a bold proclamation about the future; is he a visionary who anticipates the unmet needs of the present that will served by the future, or is he being opinionated for its own sake? Unfortunately, there isn't really enough information here to make a decision one way or another. You have to drill down both above and below to figure out what the company's overall story to their investors is. And you have to consider yourself one of them. You will be investing your time and your opportunity cost into them. Do you feel sufficiently sold? Always be asking this.

manicdee 6y ago

How do you do due diligence though? I worked one job as PC support for a white box manufacturer. They were dabbling in telephony, even to the point of hiring engineers to build custom boxes to handle PSTN to VOIP conversion, leasing fibre from other companies to carry their call traffic. It was cute at the time, apart from the management who were all deadset focussed on saving pennies. Turn off the computer when you go home because those 20 cents a year it costs to run the thing in standby are extra profit! I left that job, that company ended up becoming the third biggest telco in the country. I signed up with another company that was already in the telco space but it turns out the CEO of this one was a clown, at one staff meeting shortly after Apple had released the iPhone 3G he held up the Nokia Navigator and said, “this is the future of phones, that Apple stuff is expensive crap.” That company doesn’t exist anymore (it was bought for scrap value by the third largest telco in the country)

yowlingcat 6y ago
Somewhat tautologically, by doing due diligence over and over. Take your former company for example. You see a couple examples of how they operate, but it does seem like frugality is an operating principle they hold dear. Is this a pennywise pound foolish mentality, or is it a mentality that follows from attempting to use resources efficiently to accomplish tasks and reduce waste? Take a look at the latter. The CEO makes a bold proclamation about the future; is he a visionary who anticipates the unmet needs of the present that will served by the future, or is he being opinionated for its own sake? Unfortunately, there isn't really enough information here to make a decision one way or another. You have to drill down both above and below to figure out what the company's overall story to their investors is. And you have to consider yourself one of them. You will be investing your time and your opportunity cost into them. Do you feel sufficiently sold? Always be asking this.