This is one of those "all of software is a tradeoff" kind of thing. Here, the company optimized for safety, with the tradeoff being that it takes much longer to

This is one of those "all of software is a tradeoff" kind of thing. Here, the company optimized for safety, with the tradeoff being that it takes much longer to ship. Startups optimize for shipping, and consequently ship broken code way more often. OP demonstrates the fatal flaw in having process, in that poorly created process can be crippling. In this case, it may have led to significantly less profits, where if they had a way to fast-track something immediately, they could have avoided the delayed change for something so simple. Another flaw is that process, if it's really bad, almost encourages people to circumvent it. At large, slow companies, the devs who push the most code are not necessarily the best and the brightest but rather those who can bend process in their favor.