This resonates hard. In particular, managing the old guard’s emotions is a defeating process. It is almost always easier to jump into a project and critique it

This resonates hard. In particular, managing the old guard’s emotions is a defeating process. It is almost always easier to jump into a project and critique it than it is to start from scratch. New perspectives and better ideas should be welcome, but instead they can be shut down because folks take things personally. My (rather unfortunate) conclusion is that when I encounter this behavior I move to another team to avoid it. If that’s not possible it’s honestly worth looking for another job.