He wanted to speak on behalf of his team. He believed his team should be accorded the opportunity to determine their work style. Apple clearly believed he knew

He wanted to speak on behalf of his team. He believed his team should be accorded the opportunity to determine their work style. Apple clearly believed he knew best for his team, because they put him there in the first place. He did not claim to speak for the rest of the company. If anything, his loyalty to his team shows that he was a good manager; a good manager strives to protect the team. Also, Goodfellow invented generative adversarial networks. That's far more than simply knowing how to "write some ML algorithms in Python." Your dismissive tone makes you sound like a troll.