Lifetime advice from my mentor that has always served me well: You will encounter a dead-end position, a toxic manager, a critically broken organization, a floundering company (or sometimes a combination of all these things). The litmus test for abandoning ship is very simple: 1) The smartest and most senior people are leaving 2) The work and mission become about “how do we survive” instead of “how do we grow” 3) Hiring stops and backfills/attrition are not honored 4) Management becomes adversarial, starts breaking promises, changes messaging and stops being transparent. 5) Budgets get slashed Any one of these issues in and of itself is cause for concern. Two or more are clear guidance towards the exit sign. Last, and perhaps most important: Stop romanticizing the workplace in a situation like this. Capitalism and business are a clinical game, not a fairy tale. The only things you get by holding on to hollow words and platitudes instead of evaluating hard data and listening to your gut and instincts are career setbacks, money lost, emotional damage and a bag full of empty promises. #commonsense #wisdom #lifelesson …see more