This 100%. I once got disciplined for insubordination for skip-leveling my "manager" and disregarding their instructions when she started telling people on the team to work on something totally non-critical, when the team had a demo in a few days that wasn't ready yet, with a client that was already unhappy, on an 8 million dollar contract.
I didn't hang around that place long.
Did they know something you didn't know, about that demo/client? i.e. misaligned incentives?