I have no reason to doubt that this is factual. However, I have serious doubt that management will acknowledge they made that decision. Typically, this kind of

I have no reason to doubt that this is factual. However, I have serious doubt that management will acknowledge they made that decision. Typically, this kind of decisions are made more or less implicitly during long meetings about priorities, often without any minutes. Managers will presumably try to hold (senior) engineers accountable as they had not made clear enough how important that was. I obviously don't know who is right here.