So TL/DR, the author works for a large org with a less than perfect culture? I’d simply move. Even in keeping to companies of similar scale, there are definitely highly successful enterprises out there that wouldn’t entertain entire departments doing meaningless work, and have a generally good culture of accountability and feedback. This before even considering smaller businesses and startups where there’s simply no room to have these sorts of inefficiencies.
I feel this is one of the most interesting tradeoffs of the modern day. No, seriously.
Imagine the kind of flexibility an ordinary person has to build into everything else they have going on to make "I'd just move" a viable long term strategy. Buying property immediately becomes way more hassle than it's worth, because you might have to move in 6 months to the next place anyway. Providing a stable schooling situation for your kids just became a lot harder. Want to avoid those issues? Are you willing to pay for rent or a mortgage in a city large enough where you can keep running this strategy, over and over again? What about the situation where the culture is actually fine, but you yourself just want more money or more responsibility than they're willing to pass down to you? It's an interesting example of how when you hold one thing fixed in place, everything else has to orbit around it. Very few people get to have it all without putting in a lot of work to get there first.
Like a lot of societal ills, I think this is one place where remote working is going to make things a lot better for people even while a vocal minority will bemoan how it's all worse than ever. Many, many, many talented people would be thrilled to live in a world where they can live in the same gorgeous small town in the middle of nowhere they call home while also feeling like they aren't running a serious risk of unemployment if they give up the one job they managed to claw out of the aether.
