Ah, okay, I think somehow you parsed my very terse comment to mean something about (top) management's request, but I wanted to illustrate that a (line = enginee

Ah, okay, I think somehow you parsed my very terse comment to mean something about (top) management's request, but I wanted to illustrate that a (line = engineering) manager knows roughly how their team(s) would react to these requests, and knows which battles to pick and with which side(s). Like you said, if there's something crazy coming down from up? maybe it's umbrella time. If there's a company- or industry-wide shift and someone in a team is not having it? Maybe it's time for some fluctuation. And so on. I'm trying to say that most things are "obvious" (well, yeah, either so obvious that I wasn't even able to describe it by the examples, or "so obvious" that it takes 4 pages of back-and-forth to clarify it :D) My comment was a reaction to your recommendation of Columbo style. "How am I going to find out if most people on the team think this way" ... and my very "zen" (and unhelpful?) answer was that "it should be obvious", uh, sorry :)