> a)both the Product Manager and team were surprised,
Which doesn't mean much. I try to avoid privately siding against anyone in my company, too. It's entirely possible that his colleagues did the same and he interpreted it as siding with him. They might also haven't known the full details of the conflict.
> b)another person from another team reached out pretty soon to try to take OP on their team (having worked with op in the past)
Who most likely did not know about the conflict, either.
> c) recruiters who kept reaching out, AND op kept passing interviews till the HR part
Passing interviews is a skill not necessarily related to job performance, as discussed here quite often.
On the other hand, we know for a fact that he clearly did not handle this conflict well, and that Spotify decided not to hire him again (which might be unfair or might be due to their side of the story being different - we don't know). We also only have his impression of the impression of his colleagues for work performance and the fact that he choose to publicly post this & name the company, despite clearly not being perfectly in the right.
Not an ideal candidate in my view, but, as they say, you need to fit to the company culture - so feel free to hire him :)
