I've received questions like this from very good, very reasonable, very technically carefully managers. What happens is, Mike complains and tries to throw you under the bus, and the manager reaches out to hear your side of it. You tell them Mike is trying to ship code with a bunch of issues and no tests, and they go back to Mike and tell him that he's the problem and he needs to meet the technical standards enforced by the rest of the team.

Just because management asks doesn't mean they're siding with Mike.

Right, I think there is always a balance between being strict on code reviews, and just letting people ship stuff. I've also seen the other end of the stick in which a senior employee is blocking an important pr over "spacing".

I paid my mortgage off by being the insurance policy when that happens.

> Management wants to break stuff, that is on them.

This implies that managers will do both of the following in response to the aforementioned breakage:

1. Understand that their own managerial policies are the root cause.

2. Not use you as a scapegoat.

And yet, if you had managers that were mentally and emotionally capable enough to do both of the above, you wouldn't be in this position to begin with.

I mean, you'll still get blamed even if management pushes you to work in a manner that "breaks stuff".

There is very little accountability in the upper echelons these days (if there ever was) and less each day in our current "leadership" climate.