The point is that if there are only one or two red flags, you can risk assess them and continue as is if the risk is low. But if there are a large number of red flags, then you need to consider your exit strategy as well.
I don’t wait for companies to enshittify anymore. When they start making decisions that look like they’re heading in that direction, I start looking for alternatives.
yet. The hallmarks of enshittification are there. We've all been through the cycle of "this product is too good to be true, and provides considerably more value than it costs" "Customer Acquisition/Market Capture" phase. And we know what has to come next. They have to make the product profitable, because you cant just burn up VC money forever.
I don't know if it is exactly the same proverb -- it isn't about objecting to the bear (or boar) shitting in the woods, it is about our ability to infer that the bear shits in the woods even if we have never seen it happen. We know the bear shits, we know the bear lives in the woods, even people who have lived in the city their entire life and have never seen bear shit can infer that the bear shits in the woods.
In context, my intended meaning was that software enshittification works the same way: we don't have to see a particular private equity firm enshittify a particular piece of software to know that they do enshittify software, just as we do not have to see a bear shit in the woods to know that the bear does shit in the woods.
The point is that if there are only one or two red flags, you can risk assess them and continue as is if the risk is low. But if there are a large number of red flags, then you need to consider your exit strategy as well.