Eyes Wide Open
By Mike Torchinsky · July 25, 2026 · Career
From time to time, candidates come to me considering a move to a company with a bad reputation. Usually, people know about these places in advance. Stories about high turnover and how they treat their people spread quickly across the market. More often than not, the person sitting across from me has already heard it all. Yet, they still seriously weigh the offer and, quite often, lean toward accepting it.
This used to surprise me. Why would a smart, experienced professional with plenty of options voluntarily walk into a place where they know it will be tough?
Over time, I stopped being surprised. There is almost always a logic behind this choice. It just doesn't lie on the surface, and the person themselves isn't always fully aware of it.
Most often, it's a calculation—and a very sober one. Places with a notorious reputation often pay above the market rate, offer experience you can't get anywhere else, or provide a resume line that opens doors otherwise firmly shut. The candidate looks at it pragmatically: it will be a rough year or two, but they’ll gain something they’d never get in a quiet, comfortable role. They go in with their eyes wide open; there is nothing naive about it. These are the easiest candidates for me to work with—they know exactly what they are signing up for.
If it all simply boiled down to calculation, there wouldn't be much to talk about. But calculation doesn’t explain every case. I’ve seen people step into an inherently hostile environment without gaining any financial or career upside—and that’s where it gets interesting.
Psychologists have an explanation for this. If someone grew up in a highly critical, unpredictable family, workplace chaos feels, oddly enough, familiar and therefore safe. They know how to survive in it; they know the rules of the game. A stable, calm environment, on the other hand, feels boring or even suspicious to them. This is called repetition compulsion: the psyche returns to a familiar setting to play out an old script and finally win the approval it lacked long ago.
I’m not here to diagnose anyone, but I see how this plays out in practice all the time. There are people who fade and lose their edge in a peaceful company, but come alive in a high-stress, nervous environment. They are drawn to places where there is always a fire to put out.
However, there is one reason I witness more often than any other. A person enters a difficult workplace with absolute certainty that they will fix everything. Yes, it’s a mess, but they will come in, build the processes, and in six months, it will run like a normal company. Or, in a milder version: "It won't drag me down; it will be different with me."
Psychologists call this an overestimation of one's own abilities, sometimes a savior complex. These candidates worry me the most because their confidence is completely genuine, but their chances of success are incredibly slim.
Here, I rely on more than just my own experience. There is a vast body of research on leaders who systematically pressure and demean their subordinates, and the conclusion is harsh: absolutely nothing good comes from such an environment. People burn out, underperform, and ruin their health. I have never seen the opposite in any study: no one starts working better or becomes more resilient next to a boss like that. The idea that "this will toughen me up" sounds nice, but it is completely unfounded.
One person, even a very strong one, almost never overhauls a culture that the owner has built over years and is perfectly happy with. Therefore, the opposite usually happens: the person doesn't change the company; the company quietly changes the person.
Another mechanism explains not so much why people join, but why it’s so hard to leave. In a harsh company, things are rarely terrible 100% of the time. Usually, the bad is interspersed with the good: after a streak of immense pressure and nitpicking, you suddenly get a generous bonus or unexpected warmth from the very person who tore you apart in public a week ago. This is intermittent reinforcement, and it creates a stronger bond than consistent good treatment. The unpredictable cycle of pressure and reward works like a slot machine: you keep waiting for the next win, and before you know it, a year goes by, and then another.
Sometimes it’s different: the person is convinced they don't deserve better, or that looking for a good place is naive because "it's all the same everywhere." The way they are treated aligns perfectly with their own inner voice, which already tells them they aren't good enough. Thus, a place where they are constantly put down becomes oddly comfortable—it merely confirms what they already believe about themselves.
When I hear, "Well, I'll just tough it out for a couple of years for the money," I think of the MIT Sloan study on large US companies—probably the most comprehensive research on this topic to date. They analyzed data from 34 million employees to find the strongest predictor of attrition. The most powerful predictor was a toxic corporate culture, which was about ten times more reliable in predicting turnover than compensation. It turns out that the very thing a person plans to "endure for the money" will push them out much faster than the money can keep them in. The assumption that a high salary will make the environment tolerable is not backed by data. Money rarely keeps you in a place that is grinding you down.
That’s why, when someone asks me if they should join a company with a bad reputation, I rarely say "yes" or "no." Instead, I ask two counter-questions:
Exactly what are you enduring this for? (Be specific—in terms of money or a particular line on your resume).
Until when? (You need to set a deadline in advance, either a specific date or a condition under which you get up and leave).
The boundary of "until it becomes unbearable" doesn't work, because people imperceptibly get used to the unbearable.
Research points to this as well. The same studies highlight another consistent finding: those who have an exit option handle the pressure much better. The sheer ability to walk away changes not only your future plans but also how the environment affects you right now, while you are still inside. That is why I consider a pre-planned exit strategy to be a mandatory condition of entry. Without it, you shouldn't go in at all.
It sounds simple, but almost no one actually does it. More often, a person goes in with a vague "well, we'll see," without any exit conditions. From there, they are kept in place by that intermittent reinforcement: the promise that things are just about to get easier, that they just need to hold on a little longer. That’s how the two years they consciously signed up for turn into five years they never chose.
If a candidate has a clear answer to both questions, they will likely survive and walk away with exactly what they came for. If there are no answers, the toxic workplace will, sooner or later, stop being a strategic choice and simply become their life.
And this isn't decided on the day they finally leave, but on the day they agree to walk through the door.
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