Nah, the other commenter had described the situation exactly right - after dropping the comments, the "A-Team" disappeared for a few months and never revisited

Nah, the other commenter had described the situation exactly right - after dropping the comments, the "A-Team" disappeared for a few months and never revisited our responses. It really feels like an archetype common at many companies. They were doing it just to boost their egos and most of the teams in the company learned to ignore them. When the company ownership changed, the "A-Team" was the first under the chopping block because the new owners correctly saw that the high status they had was simply due to inertia of being first devs at the company and were not fullfiling any meaningful role in the present.