I've been on the receiving end of middle management because I've been able to fix things in the business that have always been broken but never got fixed until I worked on them.

Management will claim it's their work, will give you just lip service, will not use your name higher up the hierarchy and will actively down play their own mistakes whilst blaming the rest of the department or developers (e.g. like building a project with wrong requirements they actually provided, then missing the deadlines because stakeholders demand changes).

Where that has happened I quit and then they just go back to the status quo.

A company is like a chain, as strong as its weakest link. There is not much gain to have some links much stronger than the others.

The famous "I've learnt my lesson" which means you really reached the same low level of incompetence as everyone but secretly thinking you are more competent than all the others.

The funny thing is that among all those incompetent peoples / idiots mentionned there are probably smart people who just learnt their lesson years/months and adjusted to the weakest links in the chain.

I'm here because there's some path-dependence in careers. I started at a mediocre company due to not having a permanent work visa, and have been clawing my way up. I should write something else on this, but I've also realized clawing my way up was unnecessary - it turns out that while I've had some skill atrophy from working at these places, good engineers recognize someone that isn't going to cause a spreadsheet dumpster fire, so I should have just jumped to one of the top rungs on the ladder years ago.