Comment by sirsinsalot

Agreed. I'm not sure I'd let anyone who wasn't from a hands-on SWE background decide the priority of technical work.

Of course, in some cases, it is right to say "Here's the problem, and what could go wrong if we don't fix it. You need to accept the risk".

It's a sad fact of life that technical problems need to be sold to non-technical people as they're often the ones shouldering the risk.

Part of my day-to-day is selling tech debt pay-off work to clients who have to pay for it. They rightly ask "why should we pay for this?".

I think in 99% of cases (like your package upgrade example) the systemic failure is elsewhere and the approval is often meaningless and inefficient.