Recently caught up with a former coworker. When we worked together the company was led by the founder who wanted to pursue other ideas and sold the company to some managers. The company had also grown a ton with a clever new product so the culture changes could easily be attributed to that.

But neither of the new owners were particularly high EQ people so to speak. I left because there was no room for growth and I had already put ten years into it. The coworker told me that they worked the remaining crew "to death" in order to inflate the value of the company to the maximum. Their best buddies got promoted and many others got eeked out. They cleaned out all the satellite offices by inviting them to an orientation meeting and sending in "hired guns" to just fire the entire management on the spot. A few years of this and they sold it to a big player and walked out without even saying goodbye to anyone.