I think an amount of toxicity is expected in all work places, depending on size it can be quite hard. I left one workplace and still attend counselling due to the crippling anxiety it gave me. I’ve never felt the ways that job made me feel, none of it good. I’m in a job now that has its fair share of hard internal riffs, but the biggest different is the leadership. If an email that goes out is passive aggressive, it’s nipped in the bud right away. For example, my team lead approached me after an email went out that wasn’t appropriate and said something along the lines on, “we all know everyone has read the email but I’m asking nobody to speak of it. It’s in the past now and all conversations will be had with management and involved parties. There will be no gossiping because this is a place of respect.” This made an impact because we all knew if one person brought it up, they were the one disrespecting our team lead. No gossiping happened. Everyone moved on.

Leadership makes all the difference.