I can't find a single thing to disagree on in your excellent comment but there's one more nuance:

"When is the time to let go?"

This goes for all areas of life: intimate relationships / marriages, employment, being part of a hobby club that's not the same anymore, local community help (donations, voluntary labor etc.).

We the people are extremely bad judges of when is the right time to leave -- and 99% of the time we leave way too late. Usually after getting some deep emotional scars as a bonus.

In hindsight (which as they say is 20/20) every time in my life after I left any kind of interaction between me and other people / companies, it was well after I should have. But only in retrospect.

I gradually learned to recognize the signs and started to escalate problems early. And if they aren't addressed, leave early.

Life is too short to keep a death grip on things that are poisoning you. It seems every one of us learns this lesson very late in life.

This is all a story. How do you know when you should and should not leave? Everything happens on time. You always leave at the perfect time. You can create a false narrative in your mind and say “I should’ve left two weeks or two years ago;” Or, you can be thankful for the way things are and have the attitude that everything always happens the way it is supposed to.

At least in the context of my life experience I will disagree somewhat. I have this way of intuiting when I have made the most out of a situation or an interaction (especially when it comes to paid work) and time and again, without fail, I have noticed that due to emotional immaturity I have stayed well after the point at which I stopped learning and thriving and started getting poisoned by various bad (new) conditions.

But don't get me wrong: I am doing my very best not to live with regret and make myself better utilizing those past lessons -- as you said. But analyzing it back in time, I know that I actually had the right mindset but was too weak to utilize it.

Sure, but just because you went through periods of getting “poisoned“, why does that mean you stayed too long? Everyone goes through trials and tribulations. You’re making an error by assuming that leaving before the poisoning means you left on time. You always leave on time. The poisoning is part of the bigger plan of life. There’s never a need for regret, for everything happens exactly the way it’s supposed to.

If only somebody would have told him that leaving once you learnt everything you could is a nice idea. But we don't seem to get such lessons, but rather have to learn them ourselves, right?

I wish I could believe that but still... in retrospect, it seems you are correct.

I don’t claim to have all the right answers, but I am a psychologist, and I have spent many years learning how to not think. All of the errors, mistakes, and failures in my life can be viewed as lessons I was always supposed to go through. A perfectly positive attitude charms our brains into properly regulating our internal physiology. Anxiety and the other negative internal states (mania, depression) typically can be cured by changing our internal dialogue and our perspective. One thing is for certain: you and I didn’t make this world. We didn’t invent people, trees, viruses, or love. We are part of a bigger picture. I compare it to being an actor in a movie. Why critique the scene? Why look back at previous scenes and wish they were different? Why hope for better scenes in the future? The script is perfectly written. Just read your lines. Play your part right now in the current scene with all of its ups and downs.

Prioritize your health. Go your pace and accept the consequences. Always feel satisfied with your choice.

I suppose my biggest issue is actually accepting that reality might not be as malleable as I thought. It's an extremely hard thing to accept even to this day (and I am hitting 41 y/o very soon).

Prioritizing your health is an absolutely sound advice every time. I started doing that and even if the improvements are small and hard to feel just yet, it still feels great to feel better than two weeks ago.

If poster's boss is advocating for them (or reporting that they are) without any effect, it's a fairly hollow gesture.

If you respect me as an engineer, you do what needs to be done to address my genuine and valid concerns. If you can't, I can still like you as person, but you've ceased to be an effective leader. (I hold myself to that same standard with the teams I lead as well. I'm only as good as 9 parts what I deliver and 1 part what I wish I could deliver.)

I've also seen the opposite. People leaving way too early. Younger people usually who were jumping ship way too fast. Then they were miserable at their new job and jumped ship again. Not good on their resume at all.

I think they didn't realize that they had actually found a truly awesome company by chance and were witnessing its conversion to 'normal company'. Nothing more, nothing less. But if you ask me it was still totally bearable. The devil you know type of situation and hey, I'll let them pay me f they keep wanting to. I can still jump ship if they turn from normal company to actual evil (like introducing the kinds of perks that try and bait you into working 80 hour weeks and thinking it's fun and worth it and normal) company. I can still jump ship then.

> If you have never been in this position, you may not understand the emotional difficulties involved in watching such a place slowly burn to the ground.

I have been in that position before - that’s why I’m asking

I stayed 11 years at my previous job because it was fun and we were shielded us from a lot BS.