Audit-log a two-faced boss's plausible deniability
- YT :: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ-wmcyHGhE
- Original title :: How to Deal With a Two-Faced Toxic Boss Without Losing Credibility
A boss who agrees to something privately ("we'll handle the tech debt next sprint") and then criticizes it publicly ("why wasn't this tested better?") isn't confused - they're protecting their image with plausible deniability. That isn't a relationship problem to fix by building more trust; it's a reliability problem, so treat them like unreliable legacy code. After every private decision, write the audit log: "we're proceeding with X, we're deprioritizing Z, informing stakeholder Y." If they reverse the call publicly, respond coldly with the documented decision and ask whether the priority has changed, deferring to an offline review. The goal isn't winning their trust - it's reducing blast radius.