made a senior team member very angry and retribution was swift and brutal
"team member" my arse. Just another seatwarmer / timeserver who has hit on the brilliantly original innovation of keeping knowledge to themselves so that they seem indispensible to the equally self-serving and incompetent line managers that sit just above them in the corporate hierarchy.
Seeing someone become a rage filled vengeance monster because you turn up at a company and can do the work competently, showing them up as not the skilled expert they like to present themselves as, is an experience that you will probably have sooner or later, and when it happened to me, I learnt that getting out sooner rather than later is the only solution to this situation. There really are better places to work, and you'll be much happier there, especially when you think of those people probably still stewing in their miserable toxic atmosphere.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
