Step 1) join a broken/toxic company. Theyre a lot more common than competent ones
There are ways to play defensively in the face of such crap. I'm not suggesting you should just let yourself be victimized while imagining that's some kind of high road.
But your options don't boil down to "Be their victim or beat them at their sick game." If you believe that and choose that path, you are part of the problem, not just at the company but for the world generally.
We can't make a better world if we run around justifying our shitty behavior with "But they started it!"
It's the individual units that tend to be broken though, stuck in methods of working that are anywhere from 10 to 30 years out of date. Which results in some weird experiences, because some of the most technically simple things I do for them are the ones that get the most "OMG This is Amazing!" response. Which always makes me feel like I produced a kindergarten scribbling and someone's telling me I'm DaVinci. I'm always happy to have helped, but it's hardly a "pat myself on the back" situation. One of the most extreme examples was when I took 15 minutes of so to write a SQL query and use it to automate a crosstab report sent to a group on a daily basis. They were completely floored by it. Because, not knowing how to even do a pivot table in excel, they had literally just been sorting the raw data and counting rows by hand.
So, if you're in the "right" kind of broken-- but not toxic-- environment, you can still accomplish quite a bit. Even though only about 15% of my work has a high level of technical complexity, over the years it's saved my workplace tons of money, generated tons of money, and most importantly-- because this is a University-- greatly improved the experience & success of some of our students.