He's passing judgement on a situation he wasn't present at, based purely on his projections onto it. Essentially everything he said is false, but he's got an

He's passing judgement on a situation he wasn't present at, based purely on his projections onto it. Essentially everything he said is false, but he's got an axe to grind and he's grinding it. I'm not needed for it, and there's not much point in debating him on events he has no knowledge of. In fact, this is part of the reason I think engineering managers should understand engineering. Its not that one who doesn't can't be a good manager, its just that by understanding engineering they understand the consequences of the decisions they make. If a manager simply trusted his subordinates, then knowing engineering might not be necessary. But the bad managers generally don't. They think that engineering explanations that go over their head are BSing because the engineer is lazy or doesn't want to do the work, or is padding the estimate or whatever. The tend to project onto engineers all the fault, and blame them for "not speaking up" (when in fact they did speak up but were ignored) or whatever rationalization is convenient at the time. They project this worldview onto actions to explain them, when in reality, what they're trying to "explain" has been already explained to them-- only in engineering terms. I think bad managers also often have a superiority complex where they see a class divide between "management" and "workers". And they think that they job is to keep workers working, as if we're orcs in Warcraft who have to be beaten with a stick or we'll lie down and take a snooze. Now I'm on the other side of the table. I am the manager. I've had challenges with employees, and they are always interesting and different.... but none of them are lazy, and none of them were making shit up to get out of work.