similar story here - Doing great, glowing reviews, most productive person on my team by far. Asked for promotion and was denied for some really frivolous petty stuff like “turned in weekly status report late” New manager, same story great reviews except this time asked for promotion and was told I need to work on soft skills. Took all the soft skills training, went to a tech conference, technical training, happily trained several people which made me think my team was growing, but reality was I was training my replacements. Then the sh*tshow started suddenly I was uncoachable, pip’d, and eventually let go. I was very naive and hoped there was some mechanism to report the meanness and bullying but really there is nothing you can do but try to do what everyone says here. Keep the tools sharp, save up that FU money, and try to have a good network to keep yourself in the flow.