That may be the best description of the phenomenon I've described. I lived that. It was unbearable-stayed around way longer than I should have because I did genuinely and truly believe in the mission of the company. They gave us reason to and backed it up-but after a while, well yeah the water began to evaporate org wide, not just engineering.

It got to the point where engineering was down to three people-present company included-and a guy managing us who probably should have been let go long enough and neither myself or the other fellow could really stand to be around even socially-much less as a cohort and colleague (and to this day, the other guy and I strongly believe was the root cause of so many of our other engineers quitting once the former Director left, leaving jerk character as the most senior in the room by longevity alone).