Yup. If you become good at corporate politics, you become someone who's good at corporate politics. It's the first time I really understood the whole 'if you stare into the abyss, it also stares into you' thing.

It's a bit like martial arts. Being good at it is nice since you don't have to be afraid of being beaten up. If you have to fight someone every day however, there might be something wrong.

I was assuming a context of "you become aware that your company has this problem, and yet you persist in wanting (or needing) to work there." For example, you might you need the money, live somewhere crap for jobs, and your mortgage is underwater so you can't move somewhere better. If that's the case, then you should, in all pragmatic cynicism, think about your "real job" at the company.

Actually, perhaps I need to preface all my advice with "in all due pragmatic cynicism." I've added it to four posts so far and people seem to react much better to them when I do.

Ah, pragmatic cynicism. Never was a fan of that, always more of a fan of unpragmatically changing things for the better. Especially these days when the global unemployment rate for programmers is ~3%, you will get a different job and you will get it quickly.

I'm told life looks very different if you have done anything resembling settling down. But I haven't been there yet and my glasses have rose coloured lenses.

I was in a highly political and highly toxic situation prior to my current engagement. It took me over two years to get out of it. If you are not already in one of a handful of major tech hubs, it can be extremely difficult to get out such a situation. Granted, the pragmatic cynicism doesn't help, but if you can stomach it you can stay in a somewhat better frame of mind than I let myself devolve into.

Out of curiosity, what was it that was keeping you at that job? Lack of money? Family? Moving options?