Getting a job "easily enough" is still a big risk to take when you own a home and have a wife and two kids. I was in a job that deteriorated to the point that it was making me so miserable I would get physically ill around 3-4pm on Sundays due to having to go to work on Monday. It took me about 5-7 months to get to the point where I quit.
It is not an easy step to take. I was 24-25, enrolled in a Master's program (easy enough to explain why I left without a job) living in a house that I was not paying rent for and had the full support of both my parents and my fiancé. I didn't want to be a burden to my family. I was scared it would take me another 7 months to find a job like it did when I graduated from college in 2010. I had bills to pay. All of that was overwhelming despite me logically knowing I would be fine and that I wouldn't starve or go homeless or miss a bill payment because my fiancé or parents had stated so.
I can only imagine the pressures he thought he faced at home if he felt like it was his responsibility to take care of his family. It was probably so overwhelming that he saw no other out.
It is hard to describe to someone who never experienced a job that is overwhelmingly and exclusively awful how much of an impact it makes on you. And I am not talking about a job that you don't like or don't enjoy. I mean a job that has zero redeeming qualities and a culture that is incredibly toxic. You feel like a failure at work. You are miserable. And you see an out (quitting) but if you quit (without a job) there are a whole bunch of questions. And in some ways those unknowns are even worse than the misery. But then you go back in the next day and go "no way the prospect of losing my home can be worse than this." Then you go home and it is "no way my job can be worse than losing my home and failing my wife and kids." And it both cases you realize that, yes, somehow, both of those statements are true. The job is more miserable than losing the home which is more miserable than the job which is more miserable than letting down my wife and kids which is more miserable than my job which is more miserable than...
... and suddenly you find yourself with a gun in the front seat of your car because there is nothing in life that is not miserable. Nothing.
> It is hard to describe to someone who never experienced a job that is overwhelmingly and exclusively awful how much of an impact it makes on you. And I am not talking about a job that you don't like or don't enjoy. I mean a job that has zero redeeming qualities and a culture that is incredibly toxic. You feel like a failure at work. You are miserable. And you see an out (quitting) but if you quit (without a job) there are a whole bunch of questions.
This is one of the most brilliantly perceptive comments I have read here. I encourage you to write an article based on this.
I am early enough in my career that I would feel utterly uncomfortable doing that. My blog is under my real name. It would be so easy to look at my resume and go oh. That company. Woof. I don't really want my public feelings of that experience tied to me like that. This isn't a startup. This is a non-tech business that has been around for decades. Don't burn bridges and all that.
I will add this tidbit... you would literally have to pay me "f--k you" levels of money for a middling developer to even think of going back to that company. My professor had the ability to get my a coding job at a completely different location (physical and business-side) inside that same company (I was in Procurement previously) for about 150k (almost 3x what I was making). $150k in a rust belt city is a lot of money. Due to my work history there I would have been immediately vested and they had a 6% 100% match on a 401k. My commute would have been 10 minutes. I literally laughed at him. The amount of money that could get me back in those doors is way out of the reach of a 9-5 systems programmer. The first dollar figure where I would have to pause would be in the $1 mil a year range. And I honestly don't know if I would have said yes even to that.
I think many very pertinent stories and points of view never surface because of the very real threat of retaliation or ostracism - burning bridges, as you say.
I think that people who expose the mistakes, weaknesses, and perhaps even evildoing associated with people and companies are seen in the collective mind as whistleblowers, who appear usually to be regarded - and treated - badly. This is a sad but real tendency of human nature.
The irony is that many whistleblowers do a great public service, and at the very least keep entities honest by exposing their wrongs. If everyone turned aside and pretended not to notice that the emperor had no clothes, we would be in a dark place indeed.
This isn't a criticism, by the way: I suffer from the same misgivings, which war against my instinct and desire to tell the stories of the injustices I've seen firsthand.
It is not an easy step to take. I was 24-25, enrolled in a Master's program (easy enough to explain why I left without a job) living in a house that I was not paying rent for and had the full support of both my parents and my fiancé. I didn't want to be a burden to my family. I was scared it would take me another 7 months to find a job like it did when I graduated from college in 2010. I had bills to pay. All of that was overwhelming despite me logically knowing I would be fine and that I wouldn't starve or go homeless or miss a bill payment because my fiancé or parents had stated so.
I can only imagine the pressures he thought he faced at home if he felt like it was his responsibility to take care of his family. It was probably so overwhelming that he saw no other out.
It is hard to describe to someone who never experienced a job that is overwhelmingly and exclusively awful how much of an impact it makes on you. And I am not talking about a job that you don't like or don't enjoy. I mean a job that has zero redeeming qualities and a culture that is incredibly toxic. You feel like a failure at work. You are miserable. And you see an out (quitting) but if you quit (without a job) there are a whole bunch of questions. And in some ways those unknowns are even worse than the misery. But then you go back in the next day and go "no way the prospect of losing my home can be worse than this." Then you go home and it is "no way my job can be worse than losing my home and failing my wife and kids." And it both cases you realize that, yes, somehow, both of those statements are true. The job is more miserable than losing the home which is more miserable than the job which is more miserable than letting down my wife and kids which is more miserable than my job which is more miserable than...
... and suddenly you find yourself with a gun in the front seat of your car because there is nothing in life that is not miserable. Nothing.