[ggorlen]

There wouldn't be much industry if everyone who trusted ChatGPT and other ways of quickly getting code up (copy-pasting Stack Overflow, "try random stuff until it works" debugging, hopping on calls with random freelancers, etc) followed your advice.

Many programmers I've encountered in early stage tech startups (and in general) are not craftspeople--they're scrambling to get a product to market as quickly as possible and quality and process are very much secondary. Many are working in unfamiliar languages by necessity, or are relatively new or even untrained as professional programmers. I mentor such folk regularly. (Actually, these untrained hackers are often "better" at programming in many respects than senior engineers with 10 years of experience, but that's another story).

If the company survives long enough, they might pay off the tech debt later. OP's team just got unlucky doing the same strategy many other startups are doing nowadays and are willing to admit it.

To be clear, I'm not excusing the mistake or endorsing the process they followed, only noting that their actions aren't out of the ordinary (other than admitting to the mistake) and empathy is due.