I rarely comment on HN but this article struck a nerve as I have worked at a handful of toxic bureaucracies that suffered from this issue back in the day. It's incredibly demoralizing and yet every place like this eventually reaches a weird equilibrium that preserves this mess as this unspoken pact amongst the people who are getting paid for nothing (queue "Office Space" scene - "what would you say you dooooo here Bob?").
If you're not in debt and massively dependent on the job my best advice is run, don't walk, to find a place where you can get paid for value delivered. Startups are generally not afflicted by this cancer because there's simply no place to hide- everyone is doing six jobs and it would be nearly impossible to conceal this level of inefficiency. And if it ever did proliferate in a startup then that's _definitely_ not some place you want to be. It sounds like you've gotten a few bad dice rolls but rest assured there are plenty of good startups out there creating important products, paying their employees and valuing their work.
As challenging as startups are, I would way rather take that environment any day over the slow boil (or the slow bake following the lasagna analogy) and gradual erosion of my soul at the Office Space job.
One other thought for you: if your circumstances dictate that you _must_ stay in a toxic job environment like this and there's simply zero way to change the environment or leave, partition your work life into a box so that toxicity doesn't permeate the rest of your life. Clock-in, tolerate the nonsense, laugh about it with colleagues then clock-out and find your meaning from other pursuits, whether that's spending time with your family, taking up a hobby, doing volunteer work, whatever. It's great when your job produces a sense of meaning but if meaning is absent from that, you can definitely find or create it elsewhere. I've spent the past year building up https://Problemattic.app for just this scenario. I was fortunate to have finished a 26-yr career in various tech roles and now have the luxury to try and work on solving this issue. I'm convinced now more than ever that it's possible to find a profound sense of meaning by applying those professional skills that are currently squandered and redirecting at least a fraction of them towards the pursuit of solving important societal issues.
Anyways good luck. We can always use data science people so feel free to peruse the projects and contribute a few data science cycles to anything that grabs you. Or propose a project and rally a team if you have an idea for something not currently listed. cheers