How do I keep joining dying teams?

Half of my job is being a system administrator, directly managing servers and services in IT environments. The other half is being a software developer, writing software that does the first half for me (and others). You might have heard the terms “dev ops” or “site reliability engineering” used to describe this role or one similar to it. At some companies there might be just a few people doing what I do, or there might be hundreds with smaller teams focused on specific parts of the infrastructure.

Now that you know what I do, here’s a short reverse history of the last five years of my career:

When I joined my current team we were three engineers and a manager who also individually contributed. Within a month one person left the company and their position was never filled. I did ask and was told that I wasn’t hired to replace them in advance, because their departure was a surprise. Well before the end of the first year, the manager-with-skills transitioned away from our team, leaving us with a freshly hired just-a-manager, so now there are two of us doing the work for which we had four people eight months ago, with little direct technical planning and guidance or support from adjacent teams. This is at a 2000 person company owned by a 150k person company.

My previous team was about seven people, including a contractor who was the most productive person in the department but we couldn’t hire full time for bureaucratic reasons. Six months in, that contractor left for greener pastures, shortly afterward my manager quit, to be replaced by one of the engineers on my team with no management experience, and then we lost another engineer, leaving us at four with no hiring planned and no change in goals or scope of responsibility for the team. This was at a 300 person company.

Before that I was on a team of five, with a manager and a peer who are the two people with whom I’ve worked and relaxed best in my entire professional career. By the end of the first year my manager had quit and so had that peer. With no replacement manager we ended up merged with another larger team and under their manager, and the lost engineer wasn’t replaced, leaving us at three. This was at a 500 person company, and the longest time on the list at about 17 months.

Before that I interviewed to join a nine person team expanding to ten. Between my interview and my start date half the team quit due to conflicts with the manager, then the manager left and took half the remainder with him. That left me starting on a team of three people doing the work done by nine a month earlier. We borrowed a person half-time from another department, and no one was hired to fill the lost roles. This was at a 15000 person company, and the shortest time on the list at about five months. In this particular case, I know that none of the adjacent engineering teams had similar problems, and I’d have jumped ship to one of them if I could.

Before that I was actually on some great teams at a good company (5000 people) for a couple of years, so I know such things exist, and I’d go back if their pay was remotely competitive. I still occasionally consider it; job satisfaction might be worth a 25% pay cut at this point.

I’m pretty sure I’m not killing these teams. Some of them were already failing when I arrived, and others just don’t seem to be the sort of failure I have any control over, instead being a consequence of organizational decisions at a higher or broader level. Most of the people leaving have left with multiple years of tenure, unlike my recurring departures averaging about a year each. I also think four in a row is too many for it to just be bad luck or coincidence. That leaves me wondering how this keeps happening, and what I can do to avoid ending up in another situation like this.

I don't think this is always downsizing at a higher level. These are all successful companies, most of which grew in head count, revenue, and value during my time there. It's possible that there is focused downsizing going on, squeezing IT for the benefit of the rest of the company, but I doubt that's always the case. And if it is, that's still something I want to figure out how to avoid stepping into.

I also don’t think it’s happening because they are taking whoever they can get from the bottom of the barrel to fill these failing teams. First, because none of these were my only offer at the time I took them. Second, maybe I am actually bad at my job, but if that was the case then I’d expect to see more people like that, including being hired after me as the teams shrink. Not every time, but at least once by now, rather than always being the last hire before everything goes to hell.

I’d love to hear what you think could be causing this pattern in my life and how I might escape it. I’d appreciate if you come up with some ideas before reading my theories below.

Theories:

I’m unknowingly selecting for roles / teams / companies with this impending problem.

This situation actually is what I’m best at handling, and interviewers recognize that.

I’m giving off signals that say “I’ll last long enough for some hidden deadline to pass”.

I’m giving off signals that say “I’m desperate”.

I actually am causing these team-level failures, in some non-obvious way.

PS: I’d also be open to advice on how to spot such a team during the interview process. After the second or third one I’ve been trying to do my diligence, but obviously it’s not working.