Yeah that accurately describes my workplace as well. The revolving door of "lower people" you mention is very real. I'm one of those "lower people" and I've d

Yeah that accurately describes my workplace as well. The revolving door of "lower people" you mention is very real. I'm one of those "lower people" and I've definitely been shifted into the work no one else wants. To be fair I was fresh out of college and took the "volunteer for the work no one wants to earn respect" route, and it did earn me some respect, even a promotion and a pay bump. But after a couple of years of trying to push further it's clear there's a ceiling, and my only chance of doing any of the interesting work is waiting for the old men to retire/leave, and then I'll likely be dumped into the deep end to figure things out myself, under extreme time pressure because critical stuff's breaking and I have 25% of the knowledge necessary to fix it, which makes me the remaining program "expert" :P I'm sticking around for personal/defensive reasons (it's stable and recession-proof, and I have a one-month old so moving would be extra stressful for the family), but I doubt I'll stick around for more than another year or two. My turn for that revolving door is coming up