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Microsoft has toxic management but it also has M1 who are just trying to navigate the maze and do the right thing. It is never straightforward like this.

What is M1?

Lowest level manager

You either quit young, or live long enough to see yourself become M2.

Besides toxicity, i believe the main issue of some bad management is uselessness. Perhaps it leads to toxic situations, but the root cause is that they don’t add value to anything in the org.

It’s worse than not adding any value to the org. These people actively undermine value in the org by depleting their direct reports’ morale. OTOH, any organisation that tolerates and turns a blind eye towards such subterfuge, perhaps deserves it.

“People don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers”, an aphorism that ringers truer with every departure I observe.

(But I also see how the incentives of the org can erode at the energy put into cultivating management skills and prioritisation of effective management work.)