Oh you also get a nice dose of tongue-lashing from the team if you write a time bomb into our unit test suite. Could I have named it something more politically

Oh you also get a nice dose of tongue-lashing from the team if you write a time bomb into our unit test suite. Could I have named it something more politically correct so feeling doesn't get hurt? Sure. But what's the fun in that? ... so why not throw in a small dose of public shaming for good measure? Those statements are huge red flags to me. As the boss, it's easy to forget that you're the boss. The people who work for you will perceive and experience your actions very differently than you. Something is "fun" to you may be hell for them because they don't have power. Your goal is a good one, but I get the impression that you don't have an intuition for power asymmetries.