[joezydeco]

I'm not advocating sneaking around and spying on your co-workers. I'm not suggesting paranoia.

What I'm saying is that it's not a bad idea to understand the health of your employer (commercially, competitively, and financially) and recognize when that health changes for better or worse. If I get up and ask 10 co-workers who our biggest competitors are, I can guarantee 5 of them couldn't answer that question. If I asked the winning 5 which ones were growing and could possibly eat our lunch, 4 of them would fail that test.

Have you ever been let go from a job after being told for months/years that everything was fine and the company was doing great? I have. Luckily, at the time, I had no substantial obligations such as raising a family. Now I do.

I learned from that point on to never be blindsided again. And it's worked well for me so far. And I'm not a paranoid person at all. I sleep pretty well, actually.