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siskiyoutoday at 12:00 AM3 repliesview on HN

I worked for Advanced Network and Services, which operated the NSFNET and was later acquired by America Online. Then one day the company was acquired by WorldCom. A few years later the CEO was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a ~$10 billion fraud. As a systems administrator I knew nothing about any of that, but I could tell that the new management included a lot of players and empire builders. That's the signal that told me to quit a few months after the acquisition. Employees were invited to invest their retirement savings in a mutual fund that contained only WorldCom stock. Many of them lost everything. Pay attention to those signals.


Replies

sokolofftoday at 12:26 AM

I feel like Worldcom got a modest amount of press coverage at the time but probably would have gotten a lot more if it hadn’t been front-run by the Enron scandal.

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GJimtoday at 9:29 AM

> Employees were invited to invest their retirement savings in a mutual fund that contained only WorldCom stock.

Investing in your own employer is an idiotic risk..... If the company goes titsup, then you lose your job and your savings. This happened to many people during the dotcom crash.

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Npovviewtoday at 11:17 AM

One more example to know if Company is about to go under is when the finance folks who have access to accounting books are leaving the company.