I read a perfect parallel: real networks employees knew their product was shit. But making it not shit would wreck the company:

   As employees, we weren’t proud of our business tactics, and we griped about 
   them frequently. The topic came up at company meetings, round table 
   conversations with executives, and through a lot of water cooler 
   conversation over email, during lunch, and across the foosball table.
   
   One day my manager showed me a horrible graph. It was pretty simple: the 
   graph was steady, then it dropped straight down, then after a short period, 
   the line shot straight back up and stayed level again:
   
   “That’s what happens when we do the right thing”, he said while pointing at 
   the drop, “and that’s how much money we lose. We tried it just to see how 
   bad it was for our bottom line. And this is what the data tells us.”
   
   “Wow,” I said, taken aback. My employer clearly had two options: “do the 
   right thing” or “be profitable”. That was the position they had maneuvered 
   themselves into through a series of bad management decisions.
   
   My manager then said, “More than half the company would have to lose their 
   job in order for us to stop these tactics ... so are you volunteering to be 
   one of them?”

https://medium.com/launching-ux-launchpad/the-graph-that-cha...