Observation

As someone who have done 10+ years of IC work and is now in management, through tiny startups and unicorns and multiple FAANG companies, I have to say it's really concerning how absolutely awful some of the highly upvoted advice/suggestions here can be. I've noticed the trend for when someone asks a question for how they should proceed to handle a tough/less-than-ideal situation they are in, very often the most cynical, hostile or sometimes downright malicious answers are also the most upvoted. I understand the appeal of "justice boner" against bad bosses or coworkers and how cathartic it can be to dick slap everyone in the room and then set the room on fire when you are frustrated, but very often the feel good thing to do is not the right thing to do. I agree there are a lot of assholes in the industry, and there are a ton of shitty companies out there with toxic work culture. I've had my own shares of WTFs throughout my career. But that's just life, and I try not to let the assholes I meet in life to turn myself into an asshole as well. I also definitely do not assume the next person I meet will be an asshole just because the last person I met was one. My personal experience tells me most people are not sociopaths and they will treat you similarly in how you treat them. And if you've had a career where everyone was being unhelpful, cynical or even hostile toward you, then maybe do some introspection and figure out if you've caused some of that. Considering most of this sub are people who are in school or just started their career, it's really concerning how the sub paints the whole software engineering industry as a dog-eat-dog, everyone dislikes everyone, employees vs. employers death match zero sum game. The reality is there are a ton of people who can use your help and would in-turn help you as well if you just give them benefit of the doubt. I'm a little bit emotional on this issue because personally I've fucked up a ton throughout my career, but I often had people who went out of their way to help me, give me feedback and benefit of the doubt and helped me improve and get over and learn from my screw ups. That's why I strive to do the same for others these days. If everyone treated me the same way people advice others on this sub, I would be in a pretty bad place right now. Obviously very often things won't go your way, and the best attempts can go to waste. But you should still try to affect things for the better. Edit: One final point, people can change. Case in point: When I joined a <10 ppl Y-Combinator startup, I was 25 years old and I was the oldest person in the company. The CEO/CTO were great and smart guys, but had the management experience and emotional maturity as you'd expect from most early-20 somethings. We made a ton of mistakes in product, business, and engineering alike, and at one point I was fired from the company because I introduced a bad bug in the code base. But guess what, instead of writing them off as "toxic dumb managers" we kept in touch and remained friends since and we were able to view in retrospective at some of the dumb decisions we all made. They both ended up growing a ton personally and professionally and did very well in their subsequent companies and I even raised money from one of them for a successful startup, and I'll be doing the same again for my next one.