I agree.  It depends a lot on the industry and size of the company I think, but in some places it is brutally political.  I personally don&#x27;t even mind a critical and self-promotional environment, it&#x27;s the quiet, behind the scenes long game politics that bother me.  I think it&#x27;s especially depressing because if everyone stopped undermining each other and worked collaboratively, the shared fruits of your labor would probably make most everyone better off.  Except then likely 30% of the staff would be cut because high productivity leads to redundancy.