Really good reframing and perspective. I think all this absolutely can be spot on. I have personally experienced this kind of work a few times in my career, and

Really good reframing and perspective. I think all this absolutely can be spot on. I have personally experienced this kind of work a few times in my career, and yeah, I agree that when I'm in one of these environments, it's almost certainly a better job than anything else anyone else I know is doing. But I also think the ability to flip the script into this positive experience really does vary between organizations and even within organizations. And it's basically impossible to evaluate it accurately before taking the job and doing the first three to six months of work there. And then if you do conclude it's not a conducive environment to do great work in, it's easy to feel stuck, or to very reasonably feel like you might just go through the exact same thing at the next organization after putting a bunch of energy into getting unstuck. I don't really have advice here I guess... I think there's a lot of luck involved. I guess maybe my advice would be that I think this is one of the good reasons to start out at a "big tech" company if you can. They have all these difference that exist across companies, but they have them across teams or divisions within a single company, and it's both a bit easier to figure out what the good teams are, and a bit easier to switch teams than companies.