No reason to feel ashamed. I had a similar-ish experience. At first, I also felt bad about it, but looking back, it's a good thing we got fired.
I had just taken the job, being a nice upgrade from the previous one: it was a bit more in my personal interests, and I could get a "hands-on architect" or "senior systems designer" or whatever you want to call it role. The team was small: a front end designer, me, one trainee with a BSc in CS who wanted to learn more, and a team lead annex director of the local branch. But the chain didn't end there. There was an account manager (although there wasn't an product yet) stationed 6000km away, there was a team working on a product that we were supposed to incorporate, 1500km south from him, and the overall bosses were 2000km further west. All had different expectations. So, three months in the job, the CEO from the mother-mother company came over, and fired the whole team working on the new product, because reasons. They apparently had almost 200 people working on similar products (in various companies), and they were going to build it. As a European, I was shocked. And embarrassed.
In hindsight, it really was an absurd project. Not that it couldn't have worked, but it was just set up to fail. And it turns out that, years later, the company is still selling the old product, and has bought one or two more companies in the same field (library software, if you want to know).
Strangely enough, it opened the way for me to work on a wonderful project, which unfortunately never was a commercial success.
I had just taken the job, being a nice upgrade from the previous one: it was a bit more in my personal interests, and I could get a "hands-on architect" or "senior systems designer" or whatever you want to call it role. The team was small: a front end designer, me, one trainee with a BSc in CS who wanted to learn more, and a team lead annex director of the local branch. But the chain didn't end there. There was an account manager (although there wasn't an product yet) stationed 6000km away, there was a team working on a product that we were supposed to incorporate, 1500km south from him, and the overall bosses were 2000km further west. All had different expectations. So, three months in the job, the CEO from the mother-mother company came over, and fired the whole team working on the new product, because reasons. They apparently had almost 200 people working on similar products (in various companies), and they were going to build it. As a European, I was shocked. And embarrassed.
In hindsight, it really was an absurd project. Not that it couldn't have worked, but it was just set up to fail. And it turns out that, years later, the company is still selling the old product, and has bought one or two more companies in the same field (library software, if you want to know).
Strangely enough, it opened the way for me to work on a wonderful project, which unfortunately never was a commercial success.