I for one could feel some empathy for poor David.

Many times I had worked in projects that required 3-4 developers, did the MVP single handendly, provided success to the company, that then could afford more developers, project managers, grow etc etc.

Most of the times, this growth - success was not shared to/with me. Not in terms of pay rise and such but even as appreciation.

So when - and rightly so- processes had to be implemented I felt offended; but for a reason.

I could sense that it was like - thank you for doing the impossible - now we have to not rely to you. Even the options I was given could have been revoked on the eve of their maturity (so... generous were the "bosses").

Because the business bosses usually are envious or in fear of the developer. Because they think they have limited control. Thus, when the developer "delivers" they think they can get rid of him/her.

In short, there is also the orther side to this.

As for code itself, I find the point of complex code rediculous. A good developer, does not go out of his way to make his code unreadable. The issue about "difficult" code is that most developers learn through copy pasting, have rarely faced complex issues that require that "unknown" instruction, class etc. to most that does the job.