It’s a popular joke among software engineers that writing overcomplicated, unmaintainable code is a pathway to job security. After all, if you’re the only person who can work on a system, they can’t fire you. There’s a related take that “nobody gets promoted for simplicity”: in other words, engineers who deliver overcomplicated crap will be promoted, because their work looks more impressive to non-technical managers.
It was a long time ago when code reviews were not yet standard practice everywhere. He was also protected by one of the few customer’s employees in the team, who was almost universally hated, because they bonded over some controversial political views.
Yeah nowadays this code would never make it past a PR.