If everyone agrees the job is bad sometimes there is comradery to be found in that. Whether that is healthy comradery is a complicated question. My first job after graduate school was of that sort. Some good friends came out of that fire and I generally know that if I had to work again with anyone from that former situation I probably would, just not in that exact same situation. But that sort of "team spirit" is also its own tie that binds you to a bad situation and makes it worse too. You are more likely to stay and deal with a bad job when you have good people you work with day-to-day. We're a very social species that way and a lot of us have been convinced to stick with bad jobs or awful environments with good coworkers. Figuring out when to start interviewing in a situation like that is tough, especially if it starts to feel guilty like a betrayal of "team spirit". (In my own case it took almost a natural disaster shocking me to action and I still wonder if my breaking point should have been much earlier.)

> Whether that is healthy comradery is a complicated question.

I've worked at a few places where it became an Us versus Them situation. Like we were freedom fighters, struggling against the oligarchy. I don't know what else we could have done to maintain any semblance of morale. It wasn't healthy, but it was the best we could do other than quit. In one of those it was the economy that kept us there. I can't say why we did in the other cases.

The thing is when it's a "band together to survive" situation, once a couple people quit, everyone is rushing for the door. I think that's part of why turnover gets away from management so often. Everything is fine and then it's Not Fine before they even have time to notice it's happening, because they've been ignoring the warnings and signs as unactionable.

Indeed. I was among the first to quit in that specific example and while I didn't feel like anyone who quit after me did it specifically because I quit, it certainly sounded like some things steamrolled quickly after I left.

I selfishly hoped it would have meant the end of that company losing so much talent, but I lost that bet because of course ethically questionable remoras make big profits so long as there are big enough sharks in the water.

(ETA: I appreciate that job for a good salary and helping me get my down payment on my mortgage and some other things. Even if I sometimes still fight ulcers I believe to be from the stress of doing things I felt crossed some of my personal lines of ethics. Corporate life is a struggle.)

“Saving the company” can be fun, and you can make some good friends and learn a lot in a short time. But if the company continually needs “saving,” it’s unhealthy to stay.

Yes because then it means you associated with the wrong people and you are destined to be miserable