[Icemaster]

Ya'll are confirming what I believed and a decision I made recently. The reason for the question - the company I just left went public recently and the IPO was touted as one of the reasons I should stick around by a number of folks, that argument dissipated quickly when I responded with "Cool, how many shares in my grant package?" End of conversation. I left a week before it rang the bell.

There were a number of hard factors in the decision to leave but the underlying theme to all was the unrelenting pressure to perform, financially, in advance of the IPO and to satisfy the owners (private equity firm) of 18 mos. This translated to a lot of stupid new austerity measures, stupid in the "penny wise, pound foolish" short term balance sheet approach. The company lost the feel of the cohesive startup and became another faceless machine with no soul.

What triggered my questioning was a lot of the social media postings by former co-workers reflecting how excited/happy/proud/whatever they were that their company went IPO. Made no sense to me and wanted to make sure there wasn't something I missed.