[dragontamer]

a) is certainly wrong. Not only are you "difficult to manage", but no engineer that follows you will be able to work with your "toxic" code.

The politics are important. If the politics are wrong... you've got to fix the politics. Otherwise any technical change will be washed away within the next 6 months or so.

In the best case, you do the correct work behind everyone's back and the wrong managers get the wrong promotions due to your hard work that went unrecognized. Everyone worth a damn starts hopping off the toxic boat using your case as an example. Things get degenerate very quickly... and you don't want to be the "last sane person" steering the ship.

b) is much better, especially since "giving up" is not nearly as bad as it looks. You can transfer to another manager within the company. You can transfer to another company all together, or pivot elsewhere.