A conflict with a manager ended with me being disallowed to work at Spotify

> "We're almost finished with X, so only days left there. Y will take a few weeks, but I cannot estimate Z. It's something we have never done before and without exploration time I don't even know the scope of the work."

> "I need the time anyway. Provide it in a spreadsheet by end of day."

I feel your pain man, that's one I've had a few times before. Just a complete failure by the manager to take the point on board, followed by a demand to just do it. That's a total morale and productivity killer.

I also think that you made mountains out of mole hills in some situations. The time estimation "catastrophe" wouldn't even phase me. I'd just say some very high number (3-4 months) and if they weren't happy, I'd just reply "when we start working on it we'll do our best to pull it in". Yes it sucks that you have to do that, but you should really learn to play the game, at least a little bit.

[0] https://madned.substack.com/p/an-old-hackers-tips-on-staying...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28141203

The appropriate response to the (obviously) unhealthy manager in the situations described is to tactfully de-escalate while beginning the process of switching teams. Instead, the author seems fixated on “winning” every disagreement. If you think you can undermine your manager and backseat drive their processes, however flawed they may be, you are not going to produce positive outcomes for yourself or the team as described in the article.

A common misunderstanding of less mature employees is that only one person can be in the wrong in an interaction. The author writes as if the manager’s wrongdoings are a free pass for them to respond however they felt like, but the described responses come off as petty and unprofessional. Both parties can be in the wrong in interpersonal conflict situations, and these writings are a good example of what that looks like.

Going so far as to create a website publicly defending one’s behavior while seemingly oblivious to the fact that the described behavior is not a good look is an immature move. If I found this person’s resume in our application queue I would be extremely hesitant to hire them anywhere except maybe under the close guidance of a very strong manager who could mentor them closely and who wouldn’t hesitate to remove them from the company if they started demonstrating signs of combativeness or being a disgruntled employee. Advertising your “disgruntled fired employee” status online is not a good look, especially when you describe your own unprofessional behaviors in the process.

When technical decisions come up with no obvious correct answer, the manager saying it's up to the team while also disagreeing is just bad. The team provides input and offers their view on best direction but it's up to the manager and product manager to be technical enough to understand the team and then balance business needs (which may be unknowns to the team) and make a final decision. The team then should accept it.

The push back of using a parallel kanban board is just dumb on the managers part too. Management and teams often need different tracking and reporting styles to get work done. Your direct manager should be familiar with both. If they are not or refuse to be, just run.

Managers enable teams by empowering, deciding and then getting out of the way. Bully managers use passive aggressive non-sense like you had to deal with.

For Spotify to not recognize and isolate this person is a problem all the way up there chain.... And again, assuming your version is correct.

Unless I'm misreading this blog and its tone then this blog serves as a red flag for working with this person.

I also felt the urge to denounce their unprofessional behavior online, hoping that someone else would not end up in the same position as me, or make their customers aware of how bad their behavior is towards employees. But the truth is, it would not change anything and just paint me in a bad light.

After reflecting on my experiences, I found that we were just not a fit. Their way of working was not aligned with mine. Instead of changing myself to fit in or them to accommodate me, we clashed and it ended badly. Both are at fault, I take the loss and move on to the next gig.

Found my happy workplace now and I'm using these experiences to spot potential red flags early.

This scenario is my biggest fear as a people leader - that ICs are being mismanaged and I won’t be able to see it or intervene before it is too late.

Some would take this as being very manipulative, but I find it to be great advice when working at large companies. I recommend reading "The 48 Laws of Power" for similar "immoral" advice if you can stomach the implications and use them only in self-defense.

As ever, your role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions. Yes, you and your manager had very different styles, but we are in a very fortunate position that if you dislike your employer you can just leave.

What you shouldn't do, is tell your obviously unstable manager to go read a book on managing, created sarcastic backlog items to mock his micro-managing and directly went against his orders publicly?

Your manager was bad, but you should have done your job and politely swapped teams. Instead you're portraying yourself as a poor contractor who only slightly mocked his manager, then blasted the company on a custom built blog.

Having said that, based on this description: yes, the manager seems weak, but as the OP themselves state, these were annoyances. Couple of pointless chat messages, badly run meetings. Annoying, but it doesn't sound like such a big deal. Esp. in a fully remote setting, where you don't have to sit next to an annoying person all day..

Also, towards the end it turns out the manager was new at the company (first 6 months), so they were probably figuring out whatever upward reporting culture Spotify has, and maybe that's why they were asking seemingly pointless estimation questions?

In any case, openly challenging the other person in a group setting and making fun of them [with a ticket], which is what happened here, is not the right thing to do (whether a peer or a manager).

Good options are: (i) have a separate 1v1 where you talk it over with the person (ii) put up with it for a while and/or (iii) switch teams (iv) switch companies, if it's that annoying.

On the flipside, firing a person for what is described in the OP seems like an overreaction. But, judging based on one side of the story is not a good idea.

Overall, I personally cannot draw any conclusions about Spotify based on this, nor do I want do :)

Also, I'm questioning whether it's a good idea to write a blog post like this. I assume the contract had NDA / other clauses that prohibit this. In many cases, those clauses are a good idea. Eg. imagine if now Spotify, with all its marketing power, were to reply to this person's claims and represent their side of the story. That would probably suck for the author here. Fortunately that will not happen.

My major takeaways from this:

  * Spotify doesn't have good oversight of their managers

  * Spotify doesn't value their individual contributors enough to provide them with a clear problem resolution path for this situation

  * Spotify has an HR shadowban procedure

  * The author doesn't have (or didn't have) great coping skills when presented with a corporate political problem outside of the usual context

It’s clear they were having problems which were impacting the team.

Where I work we don’t have “engineering managers” our line managers are other engineers in different squads as I think it is great!

In a previous company we did have an over zealous manager and the team feedback through the correct channels and the issues where resolved. This was also a team made up mostly of contractors who all had strong opinions.

I thinks it’s important to remember that it was a really tough time for a lot of people during the lockdowns so maybe that factored into these issues.

But the underlying problem here is an organization that's supposed to give autonomy to developers, with a manager that is actively working against that. The manager, by looking at their actions, seems to want the team to take responsibility for their work, yet wants also to command and control the team. Often hiding behind indirect threats and "guidance".

Sure, if a manager is bullying you like this, eventually anyone will buckle under the pressure at some point. Now, if you come from an organization that is built for command and control, then also as a developer you are able to shift the responsibility to your manager and never do anything unless the manager explicitly tells you to do so. However, here the manager tries to have their cake and eat it too. They want you to do as told, yet take the blame if something goes south. This is extremely common: pretend that developers have autonomy, but still use control in subtle ways. If problems arise, you can blame the developers and the manager can wash their hands, because "it's the teams decision".

It's a recipe for disaster, and when this eventually blows up, it's very nitpicky to blame the developer for making mistakes in such an environment that's set up for failure.

Also, see the difference between the manager and the developer when they make mistakes. The developer promptly realizes going too far and apologizes. Meanwhile the manager shifts blame, denies their subtle control and keeps gaslighting the developers into thinking its all their fault.

Another huge red flag is the backchannel communication and vague reasoning behind the firing. If a manager cannot have a direct conversation with all affected parties present, they are very likely to be hiding something. Firing someone without an open discussion first is just insane.

It's not clear to me where this contractor was. Sweden? Even as a contractor, knowing what I do about how large companies work, a manager can't typically just fire somebody. There is an HR process that needs to be followed.

For people saying he should leave and/or put his head down and do his work, that seems to be part of the problem: the constant interruptions. I've had this situation before. In some cases I've had some success with "you've just asked me to do Y when I'm doing X. What do you want me to do: X or Y?" For decent to good managers they understand this is a prioritization issue.

But for other managers this is viewed as insubordination.

Managers have to be held to a higher standard by the company because a bad manager can do an awful lot of damage to the career of their reports. Unjustifiably low ratings, subpar ratings that may make team transfers impossible, even PIPs for really no good reason.

Companies should be hypersensitive to bad managers but so often they just aren't.

Bad managers will shift blame for their own failings and it can be extremely hard not to be collateral damage before you realize what's going on.

As for Spotify not hiring this person back, that's just standard HR policy BS. There's probably not much you can do about that.

I think author of the blog could prevented escalation with manager he was reporting to, some words he was choosing when communicating were quite ... edgy. And it seems he is picking up his lessons, good that he sees there is something he could have done better.

Without hearing the other side of the conflict, this whole thing could mean multiple things. It's possible that the manager himself was a bad culture fit, for example. If the manager wasn't actually a bad culture fit and his managing clashed with the author of this blog, then the author is actually a bad culture fit for Spotify.

This is exactly the sort of problem I can easily see brewing with remote-only development. Conflicts escalating in DMs, opinions stewing on both sides because if limited interaction, and no good way to get body language across that might help add understanding to the situation.

Telling your manager to go read a book on managing seems like a terrible idea. I don't know in what mindset this is acceptable. Using sarcasm and mocking someone remotely is also a terrible way to get your point across.

Then there's the Kanban board thing. It's great that you communicated the problems you've been having in the sprint system. It's great that you came up with a working solution. What's not great is implementing this behind the manager's back. You can't go "oh yeah we changed the way we do this" to your manager and get defensive even if the team agrees with you, you should've taken his opinion into consideration before you even came up with a solution.

Questions like "how long do you expect x to take" seem pretty normal to me. As a developer it's obvious that there's no real answer to this that will satisfy everyone, but companies need long term strategies and predictions to shift resources around. Dealing with this uncertainty is a manager's problem but asking for an estimate is hardly the unacceptable crime against dev teams that this blog makes it out to be.

Reading through the emotional descriptions of what happened, it seems to me like both parties were heavily affected by covid, lockdowns, and forced remote work, but neither side seemed to get much of an understanding from the other.

I think it's unfair to blame either party for this. I don't think there's anything wrong with publishing your experience per se, but come on, put it up on a blog somewhere, don't dedicate an entire website to the story of how you got fired. That just seems petty.

Nothing is more irritating than having a direct report start bickering nonstop.

And by bickering I mean: Constantly turning every small discussion into an open ended micro argument.

This is not “push back,” or “feedback,” or “input.” This feels like they are deliberately creating friction on every single decision to prevent productivity. It is a sort of strategy to avoid being managed and avoid doing work.

It is also a nonstop questioning of your authority and it erodes your ability to manage them in a really sinister manner.

Reading this story, it felt like the engineer was doing that.

If you have never experienced it yourself, it is hard to stare just how irritating it is.

Example: “ok, can you fill in the spreadsheet. I have to show something on Monday.”

Them: “why are we using spreadsheets and not JIRA. Spreadsheets are not scalable.”

Repeat this process across every single decision and it becomes completely intolerable.

But I really get the author, some managers are just impossible to work with. And their strategy to protect themselves is to blame their employees. They have the ability to present the slightest mistakes as enormous problems to higher ups. They are just tricking and blinding their higher ups and stay in business for years. And everybody below them is just suffering.

I have never trusted HR, managers and alike.

I would have simply left, no worth it discussing with a manager that clearly was no fit for that role.

Also, the role of an engineering manager is simple: facilitate their reports work, support them, care for their career growth, clear any roadblock. The priority number one for them should be their team.

After reading this story, I am not sure I will ever consider working at Spotify.

But: this shit should stay offline, man... recalling an anecdote or two is one thing; buying a domain just to go on for several pages, with detailed descriptions of months of interaction with somebody who could be deanonymized fairly easily, is borderline libel. This won't get you back a job at Spotify, that ship has sailed. Put this effort into finding new clients - a task that won't be helped by having googleable proof that you can be "hard to work with", which is what this is.

> Maybe the intern can learn the ropes

This is what I hate about work environments that pretend to be all caring and non-hierarchical. Like the author, I worked in Sweden and I've seen examples of it. They avoid specifying clear rules for where one's responsibilities end, and who gives orders to whom, because that would be oppressive — and oh, we're too nice for that and we don't want people to feel bad. But the hierarchies and oppression don't go away if you pretend they don't exist. They're still there, they just take a new, less explicit form and give freedom for abusers to play around the grey areas.

What I see the manager doing here is trying to push for some decisions without making it explicit and taking responsibility for it. I find it cowardly and harmful. People who are not interested or are unable to play with this niceness game are the ones who will lose in it.

In a healthy system, a manager could just say, “we use product X, that's my decision” or “no, I decided we're not spending money on that” — optionally, motivating the decision. And later be held accountable for it. In a system too focused on being nice and not making people feel bad, a manager does not want to look oppressive and will have to make it look like this was everyone's idea, or choose a phrasing that will not directly say what the quotes say, but kind of imply that (“What do you think? Should we use product X? It's team's decision”. “Maybe we can go without spending money on that”).

> it is also the Spotify convention of the right way to do things

Another thing people of this sort do is insisting on their opinion by saying things with a tone of a convincing argument but with words that don't really address the point (“Didn't we agree on this already?”). If the other side is less experienced in fiddling with politeness, they may feel like they are being too persistent and mean objecting for 5th time. Telling this sort of abusive manager they are talking nonsense would sound mean (sometimes this would be the right thing to say though), and playing on their level is doomed to lose.

Direct confrontation is normal, giving orders is normal, telling people they are/were wrong is normal. These should be acknowledged and regulated, not ignored.

Take some ownership of your life.

that part of the story was really a microcosm of the gap that exists between individual contributor vs manager; the former 'does the work' whilst the latter needs to report the progress of that work 'upstairs', an archaic yet persistent organisation of labour

Sometimes contracts don't work out, you fire them or they fire you, and you all move on. If this was authored by an employee then I'd get it and say maybe it sits somewhere around unfair dismissal, but as a contractor this is kind the gig - right? You work to keep a professional relationship where they pay you and you deliver the work and that's it. You get the benefits that come along with all the tax efficiencies and not having to participate in the corporate games as much, and they get a flexible worker who they can get rid of if things aren't working out.

I think my work-related superpower is that stupid things that happen in the work doesn't bother me at all. I would just give an estimate at the same conversation when the manager insisted. Sure, I would phrase it in a way to explain how weak was that estimate. Something like "It's new to me, I have yet to study the scope, it's subject to change in scope until then, and other tasks getting prioritized. That said, I would guess two months". And then I wouldn't think about that at all once the conversation was over.

If those "two months" is used against me later on, I would explain the reasons why the initial estimation was off again. If I am still blamed for a delay, I would probably start looking for another place to work.

Also, I would never try to "trap" my manager into a conversation with the Product Manager just to show them how right I was and how silly they were to ask a precise estimate.

EDIT: I wrote a long reply to someone who has now deleted their comment asking how one can learn to not care. I took some time thinking about it, so to not waste that time, I will add my reply to the deleted comment here.

Ha! There is a reason I framed it as "superpower". Seriously though, I had that conversation with my wife a few times. I just don't care about a lot of stuff, but she does. My advice to her "not care" is useless. Worse, harmful depending on the tone I use. But I do have some reasoning about how I developed that. No idea if it works as advice for other people though.

First, I am 42 years old. I always kind of didn't care for a lot of stuff, but getting older makes it even easier. I think this usually happens to everyone. This is what I would call "wisdow". Learn about what not to care (and what to care more about, like community, time with good friends and family).

Second point, check your ego. You feel offended if something hurts your ego. If you make knowledge about good software development practices a point of pride, your self-identity, your self-value, it will be hard to let it go if someone just don't get it. Or go actively against what you believe to be true. For example, I doubt that if the manager instead insisted in the author giving a precise number for tomorrow's temperature, that they would be that bothered. That it would have "ruined their weekend". They would just think that their manager is silly, that they don't understand how weather works, take look at weather.com and tell them whatever number showed up there. And that's it.

Third point, understand that people take time to learn new things. Don't fight with all your forces against someone's opinion at the moment you learn about them. Learn to accept that you can voice your disagreement, explain your reasons, and they will remain thinking exactly the same at that moment. But if you are really right, with time, they might see it. In this case, give the estimate they wanted. Then, make a note to, when you get to that task, you will be studying the scope better and update the manager about a new estimate. Then, while you are working on that, make a point to make it clear that some urgent tasks or a bug, delayed the work, and pass the new estimate. Hopefully, when the task is done, they will understand better how that initial estimate was imprecise. And proabably didn't help anyone at all by having being created. OR... be open to learn that the manager, for some reason you didn't understand at the time, actually needed a number.

I think that leads to my last point. Remember that you could always be wrong. Consider that there is a chance (even if you put that chance at 0.0001%) that the thing is not actually stupid. It just look stupid to you. It might be odd, or stupid but not that stupid, or stupid but for a reason, or not stupid at all and you were being stupid thinking it was stupid. If you always consider that there is a chance you are wrong, stupid things bother less.

Huge corps with a lot of middlemen tend to become authoritarian, competent people who kickstarted the whole affair are being replaced with yes men^Wpersons all the time because at larger company sizes loyalty is much more preferable than hard skills (I'm not implying that I was competent, that's for others to decide, but I wasn't only one who got the pointy end of the boot though).

I deeply sympathise with the guy, but there's time to enjoy and there's time to move on. Holding grudges against some kronenbergian bureaucratic machine ain't good for your mental health.

If you feel you're in a team managed inefficiently, raise the flag, talk to the manager (once), if that does not work, resign on your own and let the manager's manager know why you take that decision.

This case obviously wasn't one and I'm sad to hear it. However, as a young and aspiring start-up founder, these stories are a great help and inspiration on how to structure my own company to avoid, or rather, minimise such clashes. Thanks for sharing!

If you don't, it is likely that the temporary satisfaction of publicly shaming the company will be less than the nagging feeling of forever doubting if you didn't get a job because someone read your previous post and thought you'd be "difficult" to work with.

I've gotten fired, I've also gotten dumped. I can't hate on women for dumping me, they don't owe me anything, just accept the dump and move on. Sometimes it's better not to question it much, second-guessing the woman, it's over that's it, next. Well there's times not, like if the employer created the expectation of long-term employment, that's a debt. If he enters debt, that's a debt. If he cheats you of wages, that's a debt. Gotta collect. I have taken them to court, that's the whole point of a contract, enforcing contracts. Some people said that's violent but in fact it's the exact contrary, the only anti-violent resolution.

If he just says, hey this isn't working out, in good faith, like doesn't extend a contract, fine.

What needs to happen is it be more viable to do your own thing, be an entrepreneur. That was the case in the 19th century in America, after the Civil War, men just went and did their own shit. A farmer is an entrepreneur. Panning for gold is entrepreneurship (open even to slaves in the case of Brasil, you could earn your freedom in less time than the voyage). Bitcoin mining is entrepreneurship. And of course all the businesses in the Long Depression (which was not a modern-style depression like the current depression, but rather an industrialization process where everything kept getting cheaper, deflation through industry).

Working for a manager who has strong but opaque opinions/thought processes is the worst. It’s like they think they are a grand master of chess moving pieces around the board and don’t want any of the pawns to know the grand strategy.

I worked for a guy that insisted on having the hour++ long sprint retros every 2 weeks in which we’d get the same feedback from devs that he would argue against within the meeting. Sometimes he would complain its the same feedback, other times he would decide to have an argument over it. But always he would insist that the retro is super important to get devs feedback as part of the process so we need to keep having them. We would use physical post-it notes on a white board even though it was out in an open floor plan so other teams could watch/see, and we had 1-2 other offices dialed in via someones cell phone on speaker. It was insane. “Hey so we got some stickies that say x,y,z here.. what do you guys have??”

Some managers I have found are like someone who is incapable of being an author but are very good editors. Unfortunately some of these are also incapable of coaching their feedback in constructive ways to get you to the best edited version of you work. This inevitably turns into repetitive games of “guess the number in my head”.. to which the answer is.. blue!

Sometimes these situations are because your manager is at the end of their own rope politically and on their way out. Also could just be their first real manager gig. Other times its because they have something going in their personal life..

I think it would be good to reach some kind of consensus. Is it okay for the manager to be rude and not listening to needs of developer?

If the customer doesn't care about it, you're not going to be able to make them.

If the customer cares more about some inanity (such as the processes they follow) than the problem you're there to solve, that's just how it is.

If you don't like it, then find another contract.

Looks like OP learned a lot from this, that's good to see. I had a similar snarky, snidely-playful, and unfiltered attitude and approach early in my career and it did me no favors. I made a lot of adversaries, had pay raises blocked, had promotions blocked, and had to bounce around a lot as a result. I landed under a few outstanding mentors that showed me that I didn't have to be that way, without sacrificing who I was, and mostly avoiding politics. That changed the trajectory of my career.

Only big point I want to make is that Spotify may have been a startup, but it's now corporate. Many startup signs may still be there, but when Agile is a religion, you've gone corporate. Corporate environments are always going to be about playing politics in addition to whatever your regular job is supposed to be.

You lost a job, just deal with it. Take whatever life lessons you can from it and move on.

Creating a custom domain and setting up a one-off, one-sided story doesn't serve them or anyone else.

Are you expecting this to somehow get you your job back? Or just to make yourself feel better by getting proverbial pats on the back?

What you're actually doing is shooting yourself in the foot for future potential jobs. If you ever want to mention in your CV that you created and maintained a chat integration app for them, then anyone who ever read this thing will immediately connect it with you.

You need to both take down your pity blog and delete this post on HN. Its not going to do you any good in the long run except to hurt your prospects.

In this case your ex-colleagues will leave sooner and later, and middle-management will notice when it's too late.

After the reading the article in its entirety it is clear the author acknowledges their own faults. In the “passive aggressive ticketing instance” the author clearly mentions that it’s a misstep on their end.

The author also concludes with a possible perspective from the manager’s side.

The article is not a rant. Its tone is balanced. It does not bash on Spotify. The author does not portray themselves as gloriously right. Of course it’s a biased article, but that’s to be expected. It reads like someone’s personal blog.

Calling out a manager for bad behaviour shouldn't be vilified like this, especially when they are doing the same up the ladder to you. I think HN is just soaked in "fellow kids" types who are trying to stay hip and trendy and get their startup seen.

This isn't a site for tech junkies, it's a site for managers and they hate hate hate that this describes many of them.

"bad culture fit" sounds like using how they use the "Do not fly list" against political dissidents. I'm really glad I am providing my services independently, free from control, and not have to deal with Corporate Culture. That culture is a poison to the human value of independent thinking.

If this website is for self-healing purposes, then that's fine, but should not and does not need to name the parties involved. (Do I see it clearly that the author even remains anonymous?)

Would love to see/read the story of the manager and the manager's manager who have also left Spotify provide their take. Clearly, with the person identified, the managers were painted in a negative light that similarly, this could be detrimental to their future aspirations.

Lots of Spotify folks here could also attest to the story and perhaps provide their own take. Would clear any doubts and set the record straight.

I think if devs were more desciplined we wouldn't need mediocre managers to tell us how to do our jobs.

It might be a cultural thing, but you're not part of any 'community' or 'family', it's just a job. And like any other employer they'll fuck you over just as soon as they can.

You are also at fault too.

Was he Indian? I can picture this now.

GDPR. You have a right to know all information they have about you on file. You have a right to get the information rectified. You have "the right to be forgotten".

1. Was at a startup in the 2k bubble. I was apparently unofficially made lead of a project. I was in way over my head. The company was about 50 people, most from other countries like Russia and Romania. I didn't even know what my role really meant and I struggled to learn C++ and now I was supposed to code on my own. The CTO wanted a flowchart, which I created together with the project manager, some older but nice guy from Iran. The CTO said it was ok but too detailed. There was a female intern doing flash. Well being an intern she couldn't pull that intro movie off and asked me for help. I had never done anything with flash and had no clue. I suggested she experimented and asked around on forums dedicated to flash movies. One of the Russian developers was a cocky bastard. He was experienced and had created a prototype in like 2 weeks. I felt useless, because that's what I was. Why was I made lead for this project? Because I said that we'd get it done, despite other devs, country native, said it was hard. But I thought being optimistic was good, you can't start something and believing it won't ever get done. Well I had an issue with my title and the Russian guy delivering and snoozing with the project manager. I felt left out, the Russian didn't respect my position and I started yelling at the morning and noon breaks. I got mental and called in sick. A few weeks later I got fired. It was my 1st job in the IT industry, early 2000 bubble. The company was a disaster. Open bureau with 4 people sitting on round tables 4 PCs. Wifi, computer electrosmog, no privacy, some young guy listening to loud music irritating everyone. The "ship" had three upper etage, owner, the middle, crew, and the underground, admin hell.

All admins ever did was say no to requests for hardware and play games and chat all day. It was funded by a prominent TV moderator's brother. In the end they spent too much on booking Reamon so they couldn't pay the bills anymore. Funny thing when it all went downhill the "sail" outside went loose and the rats (employees like me) were leaving the sinking ship. The investors got the hardware, the boss and his wife fled to a nearby country and sold the product to a prominent telco cashing in big time. We sued because we didn't get our pay. We got nothing and were forced to drop the charges or else pay a big sum for the justice system. Anyhow I was really mad at that cocky Russian guy, so that was my "manager" part in this story.

The other story is I was a contractor fixing some database import script in PHP. In PHP warnings aren't errors. I fixed the script but when ran it returned a warning, however doing its job. I sent in the script and got yelled at by some guy 10 years younger than me. WTF! Ok I did a file pointer check and did add a @ to suppress the warning. Sent in the script and never worked for this house again. I don't need to take abuse and that's where I draw the line. Sure he was right to criticize the warning but he stepped over the line by yelling and being rude. I didn't respond in the same way he did, but I was close to, because I don't take shit from anyone however I'm professional enough to remain civil.

The way I read this case is you both did wrong but you're a contractor and it's the way it is, you have "no rights", even if you do. You get paid way more than the employees and you're free to go if you don't like it. You're not part of the family, you're an external asset. It's not your job to fight or change structure. Yes, you're the Russian from my story, more talented. But just do your job and if you can't, quit or talk to the manager you have a problem with. If that leads to no result go higher but do your job. You got cocky while being in a weaker position. And you paid the price.

The truth of the corporate world (we say "corporate America" in the US, but we've exported this disease all over the world) is that, as a subordinate, you exist for one reason: support your manager's career and reputation. Do that, and you can be sub-mediocre and you'll still get promoted. Miss that objective, and it doesn't matter what good you do for the company--you'll only piss people off more if they figure out what you're capable of. Bosses fire first the people who make them look bad and second the people they perceive as costing them time; competence is only a third- or fourth-order tie-breaker.

The story starts off as a typical tale of a shitty manager who knows he can't motivate shit to stink and uses abusive practices ("end of the day" requests for things that aren't actually urgent, insistence on hard estimates that will turn into deadlines) because he thinks it's the only way to get work done. Where it gets disgusting (although, sadly, not surprising) and reaches the point where, in a better world, people would be held physically accountable, is where the disagreement with one manager leads to him being blacklisted within the entire organization. It shouldn't be this way, but unfortunately it is.

I don't see a fix for this problem. A union could guarantee your job, but it'd probably be no more than a severance period insofar as the incentives on other hiring managers to circle the wagons (that is, ghost you upon realizing some other manager had a problem with you) are strong. The union would make it harder to fire you, but you'd never be seen as anything more than a problem by management. I know someone who was able to prove his boss was playing favorites--he got his performance review fixed, and his boss fired--and he still wasn't able to last longer than six months, because of his internal reputation as a "boss killer".

The thing to understand is that corporations would rather be wrong and consistent than risk inconsistency, and they would rather put up a unified front of wrongness than allow anyone at the bottom to divide people higher-up against each other. Managers protect their own, always, even the ones they know are shitty--this is the same problem that exists, in the US, on police forces--and those who aren't willing protect the class get thrown aside. The OP had to be blacklisted in service to corporate consistency; to do otherwise would embarrass his manager and, ultimately, the company decided (as it always will, since to render any decision contrary to preexisting rank would be inconsistent by definition) the manager was more important than he was.

Seriously though, Spotify can jump in a lake. Maybe they started out with some sort of "musicians should get paid more" thing (how's that working out for you on Spotify, musicians?), but more recently their model is "we should take a cut of every podcast subscription". I have never installed that app, and never will. I'll listen to Rogan again when they fire him and his RSS feed comes back to life.