[siskiyou]

Reminds me of working for MCI-Worldcom. When you think you’re working for crooks, you probably are. Run away.

[boppo1]

Tell a naive young guy more. What are the red flags?

[danielfoster]

I'm studying for my CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner) and can shed some light on this.

As others mentioned, unexplainable business models or money coming out of nowhere are major red flags. A few others to look out for if you are applying for a job:

1. Few or no internal controls. A medium-size or larger company not having a CFO is particularly questionable.

2. People in high positions, including the CEO, lack qualifications or experience. Often the CEO will hire inexperienced or incompetent people for high-level positions because they a) won't figure out what is going on or b) can figure it out, but are too grateful for the position to say anything. Or maybe the CEO never finished college in a field where everyone has a PhD (think Elizabeth Holmes).

3. History of experienced / qualified people joining the company and leaving soon after

4. Seemingly unexplained success.

5. Extravagant spending and inappropriate workplace behavior.

6. Cult of loyalty to the CEO and/or a "circle" around this person, including close interpersonal relationships.

[atoav]

I think a big one is if nobody can explain you where the money is supposed to come from. If it is all hand-wavy and nobody can explain what that company is doing get out. In the best case it was legal, but they are incompetent morons.

[siskiyou]

Worldcom acquired the company I worked for. I saw their culture featured all manner of players, hustlers, empire builders, untouchable princes, etc. battling for turf. Lords and serfs. The stock was supposed to always go up. "Genius" businessmen somehow figured out how to print money where others had not. The company had a mutual fund that only held Worldcom stock in the 401(k) retirement plan. That was a huge red flag for me and it resulted in many of my colleagues losing their retirement savings. I was far from the levers of power but I had a really bad feeling about the leadership and left before the crash. Since then I have always instantly liquidated all options and stock grants and put them in safer investments. That can be a hard decision to make when you see many people getting rich (perhaps temporarily, perhaps not) betting on the equity to keep improving. But I kept expenses low, saved a lot, and still retired at 49 so I'm happy with how it turned out even if I passed on some big gains.

[ansible]

Spending money like water to make a big splash with advertising, sponsorships and such.

But really, anything to do with crypto or NFTs should be a red flag at this point.

[omginternets]

I think the hard part of this for naive young people is that you have to actually do some investigation. This should be front-and-center during your interview process. When they get around to asking if you have any questions for them, you should take that opportunity to see if this is a serious place.

[sgammon]

1. When you cannot explain how, mechanically the business works 2. Management is elusive, opaque 3. Employees are lax about controls, compliance, even morality

If your gut says they might be criminals, they are probably criminals.

[Ekaros]

Far reaching stories of how money is made and the numbers don't actually make any sense. Or it is all financialization. Also unrealistic profits. Without known number of paying customers and known spending.

[_adzo]

Worked in crypto and I got that vibe so left. Regret it. For every SBF there are hundreds who get away with it. Tons of talentless crypto millionaires still roaming free. Look at the Axie Infinite guys plundering a whole country. Token could collapse, but there’ll be no justice and they’re sitting on at least 8 figures individually

[rfrey]

Lots of comments below criticising this post for "regretting not being a fraud" or some such. Be charitable... the sentence parses just fine as "I regret having worked in crypto".

[spaceman_2020]

The smart ones leave an exploit in their smart contracts, exploit it themselves, then blame North Korea

[raverbashing]

Unless you're in on the schema (and even then!) you'd be the first in line to be the fall guy if things went south

[hagbarth]

Wait. Do you regret leaving? Because the fraud works out for some?

[atoav]

So you regret not being successful at fraud. Would you put this into an application letter at your next job?

[deltarholamda]

Worldcom had a business model that was ahead of its time. Show growth, raise stock price, use stock to buy companies, grow, rinse and repeat.

It worked great until regulators disallowed the Sprint purchase because it would have put too much of the long-distance market in one company. (And as we all know, we stress a lot about choosing our long-distance carrier these days.)

Then all of the somewhat shady side-deals became concerning, as WCOM was no longer growing like it was. Then people started looking more closely at the financials. Then it all went kerflooey.

It was ahead of its time because it's not that different from tech companies today, only replace business growth with user growth. Profits? Ha ha ha, don't be silly.

[StressedDev]

Worldcom was a fraud. I believe they were caught inflating their earnings (i.e. saying they made more money than they really did). This was not a business model “ahead of its time”. It’s a crime.