Happened to me and a group of male engineers.
We bailed and started our own company. I easily make 4-5X more than the CEO of my old publicly-traded company, and will get a huge whack when I sell the company.
Turn it into an opportunity.
It’s not hard to outperform DEI-driven companies.
The program that did me in was an Air Force contract for a satellite communication system. The program was in deep trouble. The Program Manager (black) and the Project Engineer (hispanic) resigned after the Critical Design Review (CDR), the last review before parts are ordered and construction begins. The CDR was rejected by the Air Force. I was brought in as the new chief systems engineer, there was a new program manager and a new Project engineer assigned as well. The experts in my company gave this program only a 10% chance of being certified to operate over the government satellite system because of the difficult certification requirements.
Well we pulled it off, got everything built and got through the satellite certification, although it was long and hard. I got the company Engineering Leadership award for the year. And then HR came after me. I had not signed in for any gay pride parades. I was slower than most to complete my ethics compliance video courses, though I completed all before the deadline. They were documenting all of this and said it is too late to correct any of these horrors.
I made level 5 Senior Systems Engineer at 18 years, half way through my career. The engineering levels were matched to the military levels, except pay was a bit more because there was no military retirement and health plan. So I was matched to level 05 Lt Colonel in the military. I was Chief Systems Engineer on programs up to about $100M and maybe 200 employees being supervised. But being successful as a white male where the HR department "Prize" team with a black and a hispanic had failed really P-O ed the HR department. They went after me and I resigned at 59 years old. My program was horrified and tried to work with HR, but to no avail.
The Air Force became upset because there was no one that could keep the system working. My company lost the multi-million dollar (maybe $20M) sustainment contract because there was no one left that knew the details of how things worked. All of my coworkers lost their jobs.