Absolutely. Sometimes executives need to feel the impact of their own poor decisions. Do not accept timelines from people who have no idea of the issues. If they fire you, they're firing the person who best understands their code. Don't let them bully you.

That is a _very_ optimistic view of both the power dynamic at play and that level of accountability executives in that context would face. This is a company that previously had no developer - so being the person who best understands the code is not meaningful. If it was a company where that mattered, they wouldn't have survived without an engineer on staff. This is not a situation where the dev is going to have the actual power to "accept" timelines.

And in terms of accountability/feeling the impact of their poor decisions - the blog is already describing them throwing the engineer under the bus, telling them they need to pull their weight, blaming them for mistakes, etc. Management isn't going to feel the impact of anything. Theyve got a convenient fall guy right there and they're already setting him up to take the blame if stuff goes south.

Sometimes stuff just sorta sucks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯