"More jarring were the people who insisted everything was OK"
I read this as simply being honest (in the "Dutch" sense). It wasn't like he was shit-talking his former co-workers, per se. He's just saying he had a radically different appraisal of technical viability of the flagship product.
Simply being honest doesn't mean you're not unneededly insulting everyone around you. He can say he had a radically different appraisal of the technical viability of mySQL without calling everyone he works with an idiot.
I read this as simply being honest (in the "Dutch" sense). It wasn't like he was shit-talking his former co-workers, per se. He's just saying he had a radically different appraisal of technical viability of the flagship product.
Which, again, was simply the truth as he saw it.