So many things here indicating both a strategic problem in the org and some issues with the approach. Context: I've used both React and Angular extensively on a variety of applications, for startups and the most "enterprisey" of entities claiming to be enterprisey (the government) and came from a .NET background prior.
First - GRRR. What defined this as an "enterprise" app? Facebook is an enterprise app, dude, with millions of transactions a day. Just because an app is big doesn't make it an "enterprise" app.
architect was hired from outside to create a proposal for a team that had no one capable of operating in that role (and apparently the CTO as well)
"He already has a development partner in India, but they lack experience in building web applications." - this is a massive red flag
architect was sent away to do proposals without anyone talking to the development team to get any buy-in
architect got the background of the dev team from the CTO but neither architect or CTO talked to the development team (who would be implementing) prior to doing a proposal
"the technical lead ambushes me" - this is the first time the tech lead and the "architect" interacted. There's no "ambush" here; it's a failing on the CTO+architect's part to communicate to the team in advance, and perhaps at least involve the team lead
CTO is against angular but his outsourced team is familiar with .NET and Java; why is there even a need for an "outside architect" to make this choice when it's only between React and Angular?
"the CTO is backing his team, which is normal. He had known me for just two months, while he had been working with his team for many years." - Why is no one on the CTO's team, after many years, capable of investigating and making these decisions? Why did they need to go outside? If the plan was to continue using this outsourced team, why didn't anyone invest in their training to be self-sufficient vs a direction from on high? Why was there zero training plan?
"And that’s how we end up with three ways of doing things. There is no consistency anymore." Where is the CTO during all of this?
Adding to my comment: no mention of any sort of design system for a component based library (kind of key in either Angular or React or any other component-based UI framework), no mention of the CTO or the architect or the dev team establishing consistent standards and being responsible about their use...anyway, not every problem is "technical" in nature. Sounds like this project (and company) had a lot of issues going well beyond the tech.
First - GRRR. What defined this as an "enterprise" app? Facebook is an enterprise app, dude, with millions of transactions a day. Just because an app is big doesn't make it an "enterprise" app.
architect was hired from outside to create a proposal for a team that had no one capable of operating in that role (and apparently the CTO as well)
"He already has a development partner in India, but they lack experience in building web applications." - this is a massive red flag
architect was sent away to do proposals without anyone talking to the development team to get any buy-in
architect got the background of the dev team from the CTO but neither architect or CTO talked to the development team (who would be implementing) prior to doing a proposal
"the technical lead ambushes me" - this is the first time the tech lead and the "architect" interacted. There's no "ambush" here; it's a failing on the CTO+architect's part to communicate to the team in advance, and perhaps at least involve the team lead
CTO is against angular but his outsourced team is familiar with .NET and Java; why is there even a need for an "outside architect" to make this choice when it's only between React and Angular?
"the CTO is backing his team, which is normal. He had known me for just two months, while he had been working with his team for many years." - Why is no one on the CTO's team, after many years, capable of investigating and making these decisions? Why did they need to go outside? If the plan was to continue using this outsourced team, why didn't anyone invest in their training to be self-sufficient vs a direction from on high? Why was there zero training plan?
"And that’s how we end up with three ways of doing things. There is no consistency anymore." Where is the CTO during all of this?