[itronitron]

Regardless of whether you're self taught or minted from a program, the lesson to learn here is that your colleagues can get rid of you if your work doesn't conform to their expectations.

It's just as possible that Bob's colleagues were anally retentive simpletons that couldn't handle the truth of his code, as it is that Bob is a loosy-goosy house of cards coder whose results were always C- material (I've worked with both.)

Point being, if you want to keep your job you should aspire to be a good 'culture fit' and if you want to be a good developer then work with great people and read more source code than you write.