Learning an important lesson isn't about flushing your aspirations down the toilet. That's just cementing your destiny as someone who will never achieve moderate success. If that's your goal, shrugs?
Good jobs, great jobs even, can and do turn to shit overnight. It's often the management itself.
People don't leave bad jobs they leave bad people.
The job is something in their life workers, in a non-slave market, can take control of.
There's no good reason for a person to stay working for nutters.
There's no good|sane reason to reward bad behavior.
They have ZERO obligation to fix a toxic workplace and culture.
That is management's failing entirely.
>your next company isn't getting a good employee.
Your next employee|team member isn't getting a good boss|colleague.
Respectfully, I think this is rather judgemental (I realize the irony that I am judging you, too :)
It doesn't have to be a battle, there doesn't have to be a winner. Everybody is free to explore their limits and boundaries, and put energy into the areas of life that they find most fruitful.
Maybe OP really does want a kick-in-the-pants "get back in there and fight!" pep talk — in which case, ignore me. But maybe they just decided that it was not their particular hill to die on. It takes all kinds.
When that dynamic takes hold, it is more that the good people failed. There is an extremely real subset of the population that gets a thrill out of telling other people what to do and damn the technical consequences of their orders. If people who are uncomfortable being in charge don't figure out a way to get over their own reservations; then guess who will hold all the positions of power? People who really want to. And not necessarily because they are nice or capable people, but because they'll say or do anything.
The part that frustrates me is that technically competent people often get brutally attacked because they lack charisma. It is wildly counterproductive.
hmm, i seem to have made this a hobby of mine.