This 100%. I once got disciplined for insubordination for skip-leveling my "manager" and disregarding their instructions when she started telling people on the team to work on something totally non-critical, when the team had a demo in a few days that wasn't ready yet, with a client that was already unhappy, on an 8 million dollar contract.

I didn't hang around that place long.

Did they know something you didn't know, about that demo/client? i.e. misaligned incentives?

The opposite, they were 12 hours timeshifted and out of the loop managing a side hustle while I was interacting with the client daily.