The new head of engineering had no experience in software. He developed a dislike for the language the product had originally been built in for his own reasons. He ordered a complete rewrite of the software in a different language. He hired contractors since we had no in house skills in the new language.
This lack of in house skills also meant that oversight of the code the contractors produced was poor. Several of us raised alarms over this but we were ignored. Eventually, the day came when the first paying customer was signed for the new platform. It was a complete disaster. The code was very unstable and full of bugs. The deadline kept getting pushed farther and farther out.
The new owners concluded the entire division was a failure. They fired the head of engineering who had been in charge of the disaster and his boss too. Then they started work on a new version of the platform using entirely different people. The ones left behind on the old platform (in the old language) had nothing to do but provide support for the dwindling number of open contracts.
Millions of dollars went down the drain, years of time were wasted, customers were badly served and a lot of people were incredibly frustrated, all because one executive decided to ignore the in-house talent and experience and follow his own inflated ego instead.