Should have thought one step further back: The weirdness comes in going from "a better play is to kick up a huge stink about people are working overtime and ins

Should have thought one step further back: The weirdness comes in going from "a better play is to kick up a huge stink about people are working overtime and insist that the vendor be held to sane standards" to "throwing the CTO under the bus". The huge stink was kicked up with the CTO, so there never was any "throwing under the bus". It's your "Poster", the next commenter after OP, who introduced the confusion -- not OP (your "you"). HTH! ETA, after looking up names: No, the thread up to then was not about "tattling to a [higher] authority figure". Poster roenxi was the OP, with "raising a huge stink". Then speedbird2 misunderstood that as "throwing under the bus", and you're for some reason taking that misunderstanding as defining what the thread was about.