I've wanted to write about my (only; last) experience as a manager for a long time, as I think it's a pretty textbook definition of the trap that is getting bur

I've wanted to write about my (only; last) experience as a manager for a long time, as I think it's a pretty textbook definition of the trap that is getting burnt out by a shitty job. My mood worsened because I felt like I was failing all the time. Being in a shitty mood and feeling deeply ashamed made the quality of my work (meaning: the way I treated my team and stakeholders) worse. It was this terrible loop of failure and frustration and shame. My bosses were inept but empathetic to my position for a while, until they also succumbed to the burnout/failure process that shitty companies usually cascade downward. My team hated me, because I was tasked with firing some of them and fundamentally changing the way that they worked. My manager, who I replaced as my team's manager, was very open that he didn't have it in him to fire anyone, and that my job was awful mostly because of the amount of things he didn't feel comfortable addressing while he was in my role (but needed addressed). This meant some employees had spent literal years exhibiting bad behavior, and I (a new hire) was being tasked with addressing it. It was awful. To make matters worse, as soon as my manager stopped managing the team, he seemed to totally forget what it was like working with that team, which meant that my requirements and performance were measured off of totally unobtainable feats of success with the team we had. I was expected to get a team that couldn't ship a feature in 10 weeks, to ship features in 2. Ultimately it culminated with a meeting between me and my grand-manager, where I told her there was an opening as an IC on a neighboring team/product and I intended to take it, and she responded by saying "Maybe, I'm not sure we'll be able to accommodate that request." Which I responded for the first and only time in my career with the ultimatum of "In 30 days I will not be on this team, one way or the other." I felt sick going into that meeting because it felt like I was admitting that I was a total failure, but also that sickness was 1/1000th of the sickness I felt waking up every day getting crushed by my actual job. Now, some time out, I am on good terms with everyone other than that grand-manager, who I haven't spoken with since. I even work at a new company founded by former coworkers.