But your manager operates in a jurisdiction where defamation law exists. Defame someone verbally and it is slander, defame someone in writing and it is libel.

But your manager operates in a jurisdiction where defamation law exists. Defame someone verbally and it is slander, defame someone in writing and it is libel. A defamatory statement must be false. When psychopaths ascend, they will abuse their position and assassinate the character of people that cannot be used as pawns. When I say psychopaths, note that only a subset of managers are psychopaths, but psychopathic traits are favored by organizations and they are more likely to become managers, and that subset is highly toxic. Freedom of expression has limits, defamation is one of them. You cannot just say whatever you want and cause financial losses to others. The fiction created by a psychopathic manager through manipulation can cross legal lines. And it is time to put an end to this practice that plagues engineering organizations. It is time to let the justice system do its work. We have enough technology to automatically detect problematic behaviors like sycophancy and other types of manipulation with AI and take that as a factor in evaluations, or take administrative action. In this way, we can finally let people focus on doing their job without the distractions of office politics. i.e.: analyze the sentiment of words used with peers vs managers and if sentiment diverges too much then fire the sycophant, and if a manager only has sycophants as reports, fire the manager too. And while we are at it, completely destroy the culture of lying through idioms such as "maybe later", "I will think about it" instead of simply saying "no" as they are predictors for dishonesty which ultimately it is a waste of time. Being a manager should require a license and manipulative behavior past certain limits should get it permanently revoked. We need to make a piñata out of the concept of being a professional liar in an engineering organization as a source of income, we are better than this.