Sorry, but this is a really terribly written story that completely skips over the critical part. One moment they decide to use .NET for a proof of concept, and

Sorry, but this is a really terribly written story that completely skips over the critical part. One moment they decide to use .NET for a proof of concept, and the very next sentence has a consultant come in to criticize the tons of code that they have already written. One moment the author is apparently driving the team to adopt a new technology, and in the next sentence it is all someone else's fault that the team has used that technology inappropriately by writing clumsy code that goes against the paradigm. He talks about having these double-workstations set up for pair-programming sessions, and yet somehow the team (not org) culture allows a lone developer to create utterly crazy code without anybody else on the team every reviewing or sanity checking it. None of this story adds up. None of this is caused by .NET. The title should be more like "poor leadership allowing my team to shoot themselves in the foot cost me my job."