Lately, I’ve been seeing stories that genuinely shock me - managers deliberately sabotaging production, creating chaos, or manipulating deadlines just to see how their devs react under pressure.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t leadership. This is abuse.
You don’t build trust or resilience by throwing your team into trauma scenarios. You don’t foster collaboration by making people suffer. And you definitely don’t promote “team skills” by manufacturing stress. That’s not psychological safety - that’s psychological warfare.
If this happened in any other field - construction, demolition, food service - the manager would be gone. Immediately. Because putting people at risk for the sake of your curiosity or ego is unacceptable.
Just because developers work at desks doesn’t mean they aren’t affected. Burnout is real. Mental exhaustion is real. People leave not because they’re weak - but because they’re being used as stress test dummies.
You don’t test loyalty by creating chaos. You earn it by creating clarity.
You don’t build team skills through sabotage. You build them through support.
We need to stop celebrating toxic “leadership” and start holding it accountable.
Written by Tyler Johnston-Kent
Check out more work at [https://www.formant.ca]
Top comments (1)
It’s insane how much of this stuff gets ignored. Seen it too many times and honestly, it just wrecks people.