Wealth attracts rats. Startups used to be a good trick around them but there are plenty of rats in startups these days too. I strongly suggest accepting rats as a part of work, and learning to deal with them, just the way you deal with risk of crime or pandemics. To be clear, you shouldn't be stoic and ignore it, but you should join the pointless attrition wars and try to win. Robert Greene's books have excellent advice and patterns for politics. In the book Mastery, he even adds it as a phase for career advancement, e.g. Benjamin Franklin getting screwed many times by his ambition and focus on work, until he wised up and learned to manage the office politics.

The most unpopular advice I'd offer is work smart and work hard. Very few people are willing to do both and it will set you up well. Unintuitively, it's also the easiest path, especially when you make it a part of your character and not as something you just slog through until financial freedom. You should always hide how hard you work as the envy attracts bad things.

There's a lot of competition for spots where you do little work and make a lot of money, and little competition for the ones where you do a lot of work, and make good money. Thus, the latter will also give you more power and flexibility.