[Fezzik]

I'm definitely not the smartest guy in the room by any stretch, ever, but as a decade+ practicing attorney myself and everyone I know have this same mindset. I even love my job much more than most of my peers. But the bureaucracy, nitpicking, bad attitudes that flow over from peoples' personal lives in to work, petty vindictiveness over perceived slights, frequent unpreparedness of peers and judges and outright hatred people have for one side or the other have me hellbent on extracting myself from the work force as soon as possible. And, again, I really like work. But if everyone is going to be cantankerous asses I would rather just be self-sustaining and live a solitary life with books and dogs. So many people just make professional work environments insufferable far too often.

[oceanplexian]

All the things you mention are 100% true.

That said, how you react, internalize your interactions, and feel at the end of the day is completely within your control. Not to say you shouldn’t abandon everything and go for the quiet life, but that should come from a place of genuine desire, not because you are tired of a shitty work environment. I struggle with this too and sometimes need to reflect if I’m making a particular decision because of external pressures or because I really want to pursue it.

[nine_zeros]

I'll add - self proclaimed gatekeepers and self-absorbed "leaders" make hypocrisy obvious, leading to a lack of motivation.

[rektide]

organizations have a very hard time keeping legitemacy/integrity. there's rarely real pressure to right wrongs, to get the workforce feeling invested in the org.

the Gervais principle is an all too often true framing but with organizations getting bigger and bigger, more massive conglomerates taking the lions share of business, the distance grows. and i personally think more people are awakening to the ridiculousness of the situation. Adam Curtis calls this having to accept & pretend while seeing the slow motion catastrophe "Hyper Normalization."

personally i want to think enabling smaller group empowerment is helpful, as is creating a more dynamic less static set of pairings for people. putting people on multiple groups may alao help. all this goea against the managerial desire for certainty, predictability, the push to de-risk. personally i'd like some orgs to show the bravery to try something, anything else.

[deterministic]

I am not an attorney myself. But I have noticed that people working in law tends to rank their happiness/satisfaction levels lower that people in most other industries. Law seems to attract a large percentage of narcissistic/sociopathic individuals. Is that your impression as well?

[blastro]

humanity is truly a jungle