What constitutes a hostile work environment?
A hostile work environment happens when there is discrimination or harassment that's so pervasive and so severe that it affects your ability to do your job. A lot of times there's a lot of technical details involved in determining whether or not a situation is a hostile work environment or not.
And so you want to contact an attorney as soon as you suspect one to see if that actually qualifies as a hostile workplace environment.
It has to connect to a protected trait
A common misunderstanding is that a "hostile work environment" means any toxic or poorly managed workplace. Legally, it doesn't. The hostility generally has to be tied to a protected characteristic, like sex, race, disability, religion, or age. A boss who's difficult with everyone equally is a different problem, not necessarily a legal one.
Courts generally look at whether a reasonable person in the same situation would find the conduct hostile, not just whether it bothered you personally, and they weigh the full pattern, frequency, seriousness, and whether it got in the way of your work. Responsibility can also depend on who's doing it: a supervisor's conduct is often treated as more directly the company's problem than a coworker's.
What to do next
Keep a record of specific incidents, not just a general sense that things are bad, dates, quotes, and witnesses matter. An attorney can help you sort out whether what you're experiencing meets the legal standard or points to a different kind of workplace problem.
