I worked at a 'best place to work', and... the pay/benefits for many of the 'regular' folks was pretty good - above average for sure. and overall it was nice t

I worked at a 'best place to work', and... the pay/benefits for many of the 'regular' folks was pretty good - above average for sure. and overall it was nice to work there, but the politics in the IT dept were difficult for me to deal with. I asked for a transfer to another project or another area and was declined so... there wasn't much option except to leave. I had one guy telling me to 'chill out' and relax some - he was dating the niece of the dept manager, so, there wasn't much chance of him having issues there. there was very much a culture of "person X has worked here longer, listen to them" regardless of how much experience they had with respect to the actual domain or technology on the project, which was frustrating. The managers I had were, most of them, nice people - I liked them. But it didn't seem they noticed or cared about the inefficiencies and politics going on. More than a few people said - "if you want to move up here, it's going to take 5-10 years of just 'being around'" and... I didn't care to wait that long (especially not when the gospel preached was about merit and ability being the measuring sticks).