Tell me about it. It is even worse when they are protected by the founder, who is either non-technical and considers the bozo a "rockstar" or is technical and brought the bozo in because of past relationships (friend, coworker, etc).

The bozo gets protected by the founders and all future developers have no career path, no say in the technology, and get to swim in the sea of an opinionated hot garbage codebase.

People who leave big companies for startups to escape the politics eventually get a rude awakening. Startups, especially very small startups, have a whole different set of frustrating politics. Not even sure which is worse to be honest.