The toxic workplace nearly made me quit development

You're not sleeping well. You're second-guessing every PR you open. You've started rehearsing what to say before every Slack message, just in case it gets used against you later. You tell yourself it'll get better: you just need to work harder, get faster, prove yourself. It doesn't get better. I almost left the industry because of one job I was a few years into my career when I landed at a company that looked great on paper. The stack was interesting, the product was ambitious, and the team seemed senior. What I didn't see until I was inside it: micromanagement at every level, constant peer comparison, and a culture where asking questions felt dangerous. My confidence eroded fast. I started overstudying at night to compensate — trying to out-skill the anxiety. I isolated. I second-guessed things I'd done confidently six months earlier. I nearly walked away from development entirely. Not because I wasn't good enough, but because the environment was making me into someone I didn't recog