This is atrocious and in a better world there would be physical consequences for people who pull things like what was pulled against OP, but ultimately, this is

This is atrocious and in a better world there would be physical consequences for people who pull things like what was pulled against OP, but ultimately, this is not unpredictable or surprising. 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.