My view is that if this story is 100% true, the author is in the wrong, and the manager is in the wrong, and Spotify as an employer is in the wrong. Write a fo

My view is that if this story is 100% true, the author is in the wrong, and the manager is in the wrong, and Spotify as an employer is in the wrong. Write a formal letter and pass it up the chain appropriately (without this petty retaliation baked in), transfer teams, find a new job, etc... Fighting the manager directly and consistently does not provide any business value, social value or goodwill. It's simply the wrong play. In an ideal world, pushing for what you think is correct is noble and moral, however it is not an ideal world. Rallying against (minor) wrongs is not always valuable or appropriate. Business magnifies that, and pushing back against (minor) wrongs becomes ever more subtly complex. Business environments require tact and that is absent here. Now we can take it a step further and assume that the author is making themselves appear less complicit than they are (we all do this to some level when writing about ourselves). The chance of that pushes this story from "innocent but socially immature dev against big bad manager" to a whole variety of stories where it's a troublesome developer and a manager trying their best (even if moderately poorly) to manage it.