The practices the author describes are actually horrible, and objectively bad practices though. Truly, obviously, inescapably bad practices.
Do you just go along with it? What do you do? I personally try and avoid places like that like the plague because it will mean my technical skills will vanish with the wind the more time I spend working in such a code base.
I didn't draw that conclusion at all. It didn't sound like he was advocating healthy discussion. He came off to me as being brand new to a team and insisting on his way, while not being open to any explanations of why that either wasn't a priority or wasn't viable at the moment.
Walking into a team as a new member and immediately insisting on sweeping changes is never a good idea.