Exactly. The sales manager most likely perceived me as a threat. If I come in & automate her job she could be out of work. Like a bank teller afraid of being re

Exactly. The sales manager most likely perceived me as a threat. If I come in & automate her job she could be out of work. Like a bank teller afraid of being replaced by an ATM so they get in the engineer's way & cause drama. Instead she could have politely introduced herself as the sales manager, asked what I was doing & offered to help, like write up a report of what the problems were. I would have thanked her & gone back to coding at my desk while I await her report. I didn't even know she existed, let alone intend to threaten her. By the way the employee didnt complain. They were happy to have someone fixing their companies app. The sales manager was watching from afar with dissent. Plus I tried asking the programming manager about the app first, so he could follow company hierarchy. He was too busy playing video games on his PC & just shrugged his shoulders. My choices were basically slack off like him, snitch on him to the CEO, or go get the answer elsewhere. The latter seemed most appropriate.