These people were early hires at a company I co-founded (but was not in an official leadership role at). They had never pulled a coup before, but they would do so within two years of being hired. The coup didn’t affect me directly, and indeed happened when I was out of the country and was presented as a fait accompli. But nevertheless I left not long thereafter as the company had already begun its downward slide.

The point in my comment was this: in retrospect, I’m not sure there’s anything that would have tipped me off to that behavior at the time of interview. But if this was something I could somehow identify, it would absolute be my #1 red flag for future hires.

Edit: The “twice” part might have made my comment ambiguous. What I meant was after I hired them, these people went on to pull two separate, successive coups, which indicates to me the first time wasn’t an aberration.