a) how I can assess if the team is bleeding talent
Nothing wrong with asking the average tenure of people on the team imo, that is something you can frame in a way less likely to make them lie.
I'll be honest, my default perspective is to expect filibustering and non-answers from all but the actualized and self-aware teams, who if reading this thread and many, many others like it, and lived experience are anything reliable: are less common than their frustrating counterparts.
You can use that to make your decision then. Both filibustering or a non answer in this case are as good as a negative answer for what you want to figure out with it.
>As a result I had to “drink from the water hose” constantly.
I've only ever heard that phrase as 'drinking from the fire hose', I didn't know that even a water/garden hose was considered too much.
I think I need to find a better ... career (?)
Every one of them: as soon as I started, the foundational person of the team quit, you know the guy or gal who burned themselves out building the process. Fixing all the cruft and actually trying to unfuck everything but leaving scant documentation because the mountain of technical debt rivaled the heights of K2?
As a result I had to “drink from the water hose” constantly. And this is something I am absolutely sick of doing, and no team should tolerate it.
It’s happened so often I’m beginning to wonder a) how I can assess if the team is bleeding talent (I’ve had companies straight up lie about things like attrition and retention) or b) if I just have some kind of gravitational pull for companies that are running people out the door.