The IT department has become an extremely toxic environment. It did not used to be this way, but in the last 2 years I have seen it turn in to a department of constant finger-pointing, zero collaboration between teams, and a culture where people threw each other under the bus to avoid blame. Leadership in IT would publicly promise one set of priorities in stand-ups or department meetings, then completely reverse them the next week without any explanation or documentation. This created endless rework, missed deadlines, and burnout that was completely preventable. Morale is so low that multiple strong engineers have left in the last year, yet the same dysfunctional patterns continue.
On top of that, department leadership is impossible to trust. Executives repeatedly made commitments about headcount, tool upgrades, and process improvements during all-hands meetings and then either ignored them or quietly walked them back months later. After a while you simply stop believing anything they say because the gap between what they promise and what actually happens is too wide. This lack of follow-through has destroyed any remaining trust and makes long-term planning feel pointless.