Everybody has different taste and opinions what "clean code" is supposed to look like (best example of this is "for-loops" vs .map()" - IMHO nested loops are usually more readable than a function chain which does the same, but other people have the opposite opinion).
IMHO the core problem of the situation described in the article is that the guy simply rewrote a piece of code without before talking to the author/maintainer/owner of that piece code.
