It's a rhetorical bit of three card monte. Note that he seamlessly shifts from pursuing an absolute of bug-free software and instead offers some techniques for

It's a rhetorical bit of three card monte. Note that he seamlessly shifts from pursuing an absolute of bug-free software and instead offers some techniques for reducing bugs, which the manager deems more expensive than the gains they'd offer. Then he conflates "would be better" with "bug-free software" in a bit of snark at the end, and you can almost hear the eye-roll from the manager.