If any of these people has a disagreement with a co-worker over the co-worker's changes, it's their duty as a fellow employee to explain to the co-worker why they disagree, or at least explain to the manager why they disagree with the change, so that the manager can explain it to the co-worker. But just making the change and then threatening to quit... that is most definitely crazy.
> No, they are crazy.
That may be.
> Reverting someone else's changes without explaining why is crazy.
Not necessarily. There are times when you are so wrong you aren't even wrong.
> If any of these people has a disagreement with a co-worker over the co-worker's changes, it's their duty as a fellow employee to explain to the co-worker why they disagree, or at least explain to the manager why they disagree with the change, so that the manager can explain it to the co-worker.
Let's imagine a scenario where they had done this, and yet nothing had corrected the problem. At that point, it would be quite reasonable to revert someone's changes without explaining why, and threatening to quit if one wasn't allowed to.
Those are pretty big flags that you screwed up.
The person making the threat felt they were immune from backlash, but they were threatened by where I was working in the code base because they lacked the expertise to compete on a technical level. What I found even more interesting was that our mutual manager felt that his position was an even more tenuous political position so he wasn't going to do anything he wasn't told to do by someone above him in the chain of command.
If someone working for me threatens to quit, I first ask them if their issue can be resolved rationally, and if it can't I ask them when will their last day be. But that is because even if my boss then comes to me and says "You told this guy who is friends with <important person> to quit? Your fired!" I am totally ok with that. Not everyone is.
To look at the flip side though as to whether I screwed up or not, I'm reasonably self aware enough to know when I do. And prior to this incident going 'nuclear', as it did, I had come at it from several different directions to try to eliminate bias. Every third party consulted felt my reasoning was pretty sound. But we all know that being "right" doesn't mean you get what you want in a politicized environment. Just ask the Ukrainians living in Crimea, life is what it is. We move past it.
I had assumed as much. Sun seemed to be very political except for a very few areas; I avoided it for that exact reason.
It's always a hard lesson for a junior person to realize that politics exists. I had my introduction to that at a very big company in a very hard way.