Op was not saying it was good and documented code so a lot of context is missing here but even if it was a POC that needed a more generic/maintainable code rewrite, it would still justify keeping the original developer who wrote the code and giving them a market value compensation. Now again, we’re missing context here and it is not impossible that the code was a complicated mess that the original dev cobbled together culminating in a hot fire and they were too arrogant to be kept around. I’ve seen variations of that scenario. However, incompetency of the management is more likely to be the cause. Let’s keep in mind that in a lot of companies they management want to make sure all devs are replaceable so they don’t obtain too much leverage.