In my experience, good managers would never take things that way. I read edw's post again just to be sure I didn't miss something. But none of his comments ar

In my experience, good managers would never take things that way. I read edw's post again just to be sure I didn't miss something. But none of his comments are malevolent, nor are they rebellious. They're calm, rational, and probing. So correspondingly in my experience, only poor quality and insecure managers would get the same impression as you. High quality managers would value the feedback and expertise from their technical folk, and never take direct comments, questions, or contradictory points as insubordination. It's the first lesson I learned in management anyway. You hire people who are smarter than you, and you correspondingly depend on them for the questions you hired them to answer. Direct to-the-point conversations aren't conflictive, they're productive. I can't tell you how many times, I've told people, "OK, just tell me the point." Likewise, I can't tell you how many times people have told me, "OK, just tell me the point." People don't like wasting time with unnecessary chit chat when they can get things done, and if there's professionalism and respect in the group, there's no chance such a direct contradictory statement could ever be perceived as an FU.