> Instead of doing things ways that are easy and straightforward, you instead were incentivized to make your code complicated so you can brag about how complicated it is, (...)

I see this as a red flag, and an attitude problem typical of toxic employees. I'll explain why.

More often than not, I see this sort of complain from junior developers who either completely miss key requirements behind constraints or are completely oblivious to operational constraints. They invest little to no effort to try to understand the problem domain and what problems are fixed, and instead they redirect all their energy arguing for major rework that they claim makes things simpler albeit their analysis is superficial and simplistic as they are oblivious to the actual constraints. But that doesn't dissuade them.

This analysis failure ends up creating problems within the team because they conflate any lack of support for their half-baked ideas as an irrational opposition to their personal initiative, and thus somehow a part of the problem. Consequently, you start to see those types lashing out at team members and throwing accusations and being an all around pita. They pull these stunts at every single occurrence of any minor inconvenience, as if it automatically means anything else is always better than what they have.

The worst comes if these egregious types get their way. They roll out a change that they depict as a silver bullet for all inconveniences, except that even in ideal circumstances in the real world there are always minor inconveniences. When they surface, these egregious types get all defensive and throw tantrums to bully the team into suppressing any sort of criticism that they themselves spent their time creating for others.

There are many reasons why some companies impose and enforce principles such as "respect what came before" and "disagree and commit". No one wants to work with the assholes who don't follow these principles. Their output is always pristine and the shit shortcuts they took are always thoroughly justified, but he'll forbid if someone else's changes have anything that pricks their sense of taste.

It's a red flag. Clearly an attitude problem. Throwing a whole organization under the bus is a clear tell. If everyone around you is an asshole, the ugly truth is that you are very likely the only asshole around.