the CTO in question at the time also took the side of a more established dev when i said that a proposal he made was ... i forget what adjective but it was taken as a slur... and yeah that was what led to the CTO doing my work for me even though it was a waste of his time when he hired someone who could do it
so, yeah, someone with an as established company the founder or CTO leaning in to help a customer is SUPER bad optics
and i discovered that he quit supporting Zap and hasn't made the effort to keep it running and that is just fucked up, i'm not hot on Mallers these days even though i generally regard him well