Yeah, you never know if the backup is really working, or if the deletion might (in some obviously-deeply-flawed logic/architecture) get streamed to the replica/

Yeah, you never know if the backup is really working, or if the deletion might (in some obviously-deeply-flawed logic/architecture) get streamed to the replica/backup, etc. I'm not taking a position on the workplace ethics issue, but from a sheerly technical standpoint I would not characterise that as a safe course of action, like that person seemed to be representing it.