Hiring freeze "officially". There's a promise from the director (my manager's manager) that I would be able to change teams either internally or in a different

Hiring freeze "officially". There's a promise from the director (my manager's manager) that I would be able to change teams either internally or in a different department if it doesn't work out. I don't know what that promise is worth, because I feel like I'm being gaslighted that "there's no problem" and "everyone in the team is nice." Edit: Also, the senior people aren't interested in career advancement and I can't interest them in what comes after the craptastic technical debt we're working on supposedly cleaning up. I've been told not to touch X and Y because it's "special code". I feel like my hands are being tied behind my back and being setup to fail.