I like to not think of anything as “absolute” or “dealbreaker” (within reason. If there’s a culture of harassment I’m gone, for example). But spend intentional time throughout your career reflecting on what matters to you in terms of team culture, code culture, career growth opportunities, compensation, etc. There are a lot of factors to being happy in your work, and a lot of ways to get there. Be intentional about it, and try to always move toward it. It matters a lot more than whatever software you’re writing.

Man it sounds like you’ve had a rough go. I’m sorry that’s been your experience.

As a graphics programmer in the games industry, it’s always exciting to me when people discover how much fun all this stuff is

Ya fair enough. I’d put my “razor” at behaviour that targets vulnerable / minorities, which is probably broader / vaguer than just slurs, but it’s going to be a spectrum of opinions and preferences

This.

I ask my boss about project-wide stuff that might impact me and my team, discuss strategy / priorities / roadmaps, ask them to weigh in on anything where I need project leadership to help resolve an issue, and any perfunctory “goals” stuff (I hate it so much haha)

You’re right that it’s messy and imperfect and false positives can be really frustrating.

But the alternative - no efforts to maintain a safe space - is that vulnerable people are typically the target. Toxicity typically punches down.

I’ll happily trade some clunky inconvenience so that those people can safely participate