[RyanZAG]

Going to go off the deep end here and say you really were at fault. You can't just rewrite whole systems as a new hire on your own decision with zero buy in from other colleagues or management. While the technology is important in a startup, you kind of tossed the team out of the window there and likely just replaced code that everyone else understood (however bad it was) with code that nobody except you understood.

Basically your approach was terrible and working in a company is more than just producing code. You should have had a chat with whoever had previously been involved in the system as well as whoever in management was in charge of it and explained the issues. They might have told you that the system you had just rewritten was being discontinued in 2 months for a different system someone was making, etc.

I get the desire to just fix any code you come across and it's a great desire to have - but take 15 minutes to communicate with your team - or hell, just send an email before rewriting a whole system.

[api]

I wasn't clear in my OP: there was poor communication on both sides here. I was receiving mixed messages, with the company's VP basically claiming I wasn't able to deliver anything good enough and my immediate boss telling me to kind of punt on the thing. In retrospect I should have dug more deeply. Actually in retrospect I should have started looking for another job, since the VP line-jumping the team lead is a sign of insanely dysfunctional politics.

[candybar]

RyanZag is right that the way you approached this was probably not ideal, but it's quite appalling that the response to a raw display of passion and technical talent was dismissal. They don't deserve you, really.