Back in the early 2000s, I worked for a startup that had some really promising technology and we had secured $12 mil on a gov't contract.

Things were progressing as planned for about 18 months -and then the CEO started hinting at financial struggles. For context, we had a total of 8 employees and our product wasn't expensive to produce once we dialed in the prototypes. So we should have had a very long runway with the gov't contract.

I finally cornered the CEO and started asking pointed questions and eventually said, 'Show me the books.' He was hesitant and really didn't legally owe it to me or anything, but he finally relented.

Holy cow. Talk about misuse of funds. Bottom line: We'd be out of money in about 4 months. So I avoided getting laid off by getting a different job - but that was a mess and I learned a ton about wise business decisions from that experience.

I did give a heads up to the two people who reported to me and only one took my advice to look for a new job. The other guy kept holding on to the idea that another contract would be coming...and he of course got laid off.