I think part of the issue is immigration/visa problems. If you're a US citizen/permanent-resident, there's sort of a "ceiling" to how much abuse you will get from your employer, since at the end of the day you can say "fuck this, I'm working somewhere else"...however, if you're on some kind of visa, these things get a lot more difficult, since the company doesn't just control your livelihood, they actually control you being allowed in the country at all.
While of course you can still apply to other places, and maybe you'll get lucky to find another company who wil sponsor your visa, it's a substantially more-uphill battle.
(disclaimer, not an immigrant, this is just based on what immigrant friends have told me and from what I've read).
I started working for Apple a few years ago as a software engineer, after leaving a job that I liked, thinking that working for the biggest tech corporation to ever exist would be the next logical step. I don't work in California, and instead work for a satellite office in the northeast US.
People in California appear to lack the ability to understand that the northeast is three hours ahead of them. As a result, it's not uncommon for me to have meetings that go on until 9:30pm, multiple times per week. I have brought this up to my manager (and his manager (and his manager)) multiple times, asking if they can schedule meetings a bit earlier, and they say they'll "look into it". Apparently they've been "looking into it" for two years now.
Apple ostensibly supports "personal development", which would be great in theory, but anything involving this involves manager approval. While they're usually ok with you going to conferences, I tried getting approval for tuition reimbursement (which is advertised on the people/hrweb site). My direct manager said "ok", but his manager said that he's afraid that me going back to school and completing my degree would be "too big of a distraction from work", and will not be approving my request.
My job is ostensibly "individual contributor", but most of what I do is read emails, and copy and paste Java from one file to another. When I told my manager's manager that I didn't find the work enjoyable, and that I would like to be given another project, his response was that I simply "don't understand how cool the project is".
My situation is substanially less horrible than the OP's post, I don't have any visa issues or anything and I can fairly easily quit, and I probably will quit fairly soon. Still, that's a difficult thing to do, my stock packages are still vesting. Oh well.
While of course you can still apply to other places, and maybe you'll get lucky to find another company who wil sponsor your visa, it's a substantially more-uphill battle.
(disclaimer, not an immigrant, this is just based on what immigrant friends have told me and from what I've read).