Sadly one person's terrible code is another person's elegant design. The best way to figure out if your perception matches reality is to work for many companies

Sadly one person's terrible code is another person's elegant design. The best way to figure out if your perception matches reality is to work for many companies, and see how teams balance different factors. I'm going to assume that your opinion is correct snd this guru is actually making bad code. In that case, this company is dysfunctional. Everyone is afraid to stand up to the guru. I have left similar companies, and was happy that in doing so I helped enforce survival of the fittest, we can't have companies like that prospering and cloning themselves.