I'm not sure what that engineer's reason specifically was, but I'll chock it up to laziness. The CMOS batteries, themselves, have a shelf life and for whatever

I'm not sure what that engineer's reason specifically was, but I'll chock it up to laziness. The CMOS batteries, themselves, have a shelf life and for whatever reason, we probably had none of the specific size required on hand. Being that the device was on battery backup in a rack, it probably led to the engineer thinking "it'll never be rebooted, a label will do"