I can relate to this on a much milder level. Story time. I was once working at a startup that was doing very well (growing rapidly, getting investment) despite the founders being pretty incompetent. They didn't know what they were doing, and they wouldn't listen to me about how to do things better. I have no problem quitting a job if my bosses are incompetent or if I feel I'm not able to contribute, but in this case my girlfriend at the time was nervous about it when I brought it up, and I let that override my urge to quit. A couple of months later they fired me. I experienced a powerful wave of unfamiliar emotion when I read the "your fired" email and it took me a moment to analyze it and figure out that it was relief, a wave of relief.
It was one of the very few times in my life when I've let other people convince me to ignore my gut feelings. I'm not blaming my ex-girlfriend, it was my decision, but it was the wrong decision.
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For your amusement here are some details of the business: they had no QA department, the users were our QA. All of the business logic was in stored procedures in the DB which, as a result, was always on fire even as we continually upgraded the hardware. Our HTML was 25% white space because our PHP guy liked deep indentation. He was a terrible programmer but he was a co-founder and a friend of the DB/sysadmin co-founder so he couldn't/wouldn't be fired. I tried to explain to him once that arrays, linked lists, and hash tables were different things but he refused to believe me because the only experience he had was with PHP and JS. The DB/sysadmin guy was a total "Master-Blaster" (You know "Who run Bartertown!?" from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome), if the CEO asked him to do something he didn't want to do he would throw actual screaming fits or just lie to him and say "That's impossible." They built a skating half-pipe in the office even though none of them skated. It was madness. But the users loved us and the numbers went up and up, so investors were lining up to vie for the chance to give them money. Eventually they (the investors) sidelined the three co-founders and now the company is a Wall street darling and a household word. Go figure.
It was one of the very few times in my life when I've let other people convince me to ignore my gut feelings. I'm not blaming my ex-girlfriend, it was my decision, but it was the wrong decision.
- - - -
For your amusement here are some details of the business: they had no QA department, the users were our QA. All of the business logic was in stored procedures in the DB which, as a result, was always on fire even as we continually upgraded the hardware. Our HTML was 25% white space because our PHP guy liked deep indentation. He was a terrible programmer but he was a co-founder and a friend of the DB/sysadmin co-founder so he couldn't/wouldn't be fired. I tried to explain to him once that arrays, linked lists, and hash tables were different things but he refused to believe me because the only experience he had was with PHP and JS. The DB/sysadmin guy was a total "Master-Blaster" (You know "Who run Bartertown!?" from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome), if the CEO asked him to do something he didn't want to do he would throw actual screaming fits or just lie to him and say "That's impossible." They built a skating half-pipe in the office even though none of them skated. It was madness. But the users loved us and the numbers went up and up, so investors were lining up to vie for the chance to give them money. Eventually they (the investors) sidelined the three co-founders and now the company is a Wall street darling and a household word. Go figure.