That sounds like some one hacked up an existing project into Bazel without resolving the opinionated differences. I've worked on Bazel projects at multiple comp

That sounds like some one hacked up an existing project into Bazel without resolving the opinionated differences. I've worked on Bazel projects at multiple companies and I've seen things go off the rails like that a couple times before someone that actually understands the tool rewrites the problematic build process. It's usually some nasty stuff where someone tried to work outside of Bazel because they didn't understand it and created a bunch of impedance mismatches. New people doing this instead of the "right way" is the most valid criticism of Bazel IMO. Sounds like you're working in the worst of both worlds right now.