I'm sorry but what the fuck is wrong with you?

Great question. No irony here: I appreciate you having the courage to ask it. Years of experience in the actual corporate world-- not what it says it is with the vapid claims of meritocracy, but what it actually is-- is the answer. People who haven't been in the game are horrified by what it does to people. Get ready for some hard-core, red-pill depressive realism.

In general, CCing someone's manager when you're asking for something, or when you're pissed off, is a Dick Move. There are exceptions, but they usually require the permission of that "someone". For example, I might ask that person to CC people up the chain so that I can justify working on your issue to them, and so they're briefed on what you need. If you don't know my manager and the higher-ups, I might make introductions. That's different. I'll also make it clear in the exchange that I'm the one who's taking initiative to figure out whether your issue is a priority.

When you CC someone's manager as described, and without it being clear that this person asked for management to be informed, you make that person look weak. The appearance it gives, up the chain, is that this person is lazy and shiftless and has to be threatened, or work will not get done. I'm not a fan of looking weak, and the stakes of this game are too high for me to ignore that. If you embarrass me in front of people whose opinions of me matter to my career, I'm going to exert the rights over you that I've won from your doing so.

I guess I'd say, and sorry if this is cliche... hate the game and not the player. I'm not even a very good player, and I hate the game too. It's pretty fucking disgusting. I wish that Work was about building things and excelling (and it is, in some places, but those are rare and don't seem to last for more than a year or two) rather than continually justifying yourself and scaring away adversaries in order to protect and grow (slowly grow) an income and some pathetic tiny amount of social status-- I say "pathetic tiny amount" because the people with real status in corporate Work were born into the connections to guarantee them the top jobs and best opportunities, and the other 99.5% of us just have to compete over the "marine snow" that filters to the bottom.

If it sounds like a shitty attitude, what I have is a realistic attitude. I have a ridiculously strong work ethic and I love much of the work itself. Solving problems, creating things out of nothing, building teams... all of that's a hell of a lot of fun, and when I get a chance to focus on that stuff, I'm happy. What keeps me going is the hope that, some day, I'll be demonstrably so good at that, that it buys me a pass out of the garbage like having to watch my back and justify tiny increments of time. (My IQ is over 150; I simply wasn't fucking built to justify my own time.) I'm also a hard-core realist. Having to watch the actions of strangers because they might affect my ability to fucking pay rent, for the most arbitrary reasons or no reason at all, means that I'm actually in a prison. It's better than most prisons, and it's not the fault of one company. It's the fault of the disaster of a system we call corporate capitalism-- in reality, a system designed to give the best of socialism and capitalism to a well-connected elite and to drop the worst of both systems on everyone else-- and a society in decline.

Here's the thing: I don't generally let my hatred of organizational life bleed into action. I realize that all of us, even most managers and executives, are locked up together. Middle- and upper-middle-level bankers are making half a million per year and they're just as miserable as I am. I don't envy or resent them, because I know many of these people. On the other hand, if someone makes a move that threatens my career and puts me at risk of a setback that would have me having to play this game (the office subordinate game, which is degrading and ethically compromising) for 5 more years, I'm going to fucking hurt that person, because God works through people.

I want to get out of this game, get the independent credibility necessary to become one of those highly-demanded consultants who never has to worry about finding work, so I can be a real person again. Anyone who gets in the way of it... is just a victim of a force of nature, like someone who decides to take a selfie whilst pissing next to an advancing forest fire.

Back to the main topic: it's not that person's right to get involved in my management chain without asking me. Plain and simple. He can ask me for permission to discuss it with management, and I'll probably grant it. The CC is him pretending that he doesn't need that permission, which makes it my job to make sure he realizes that, yes, he did.