What they are saying is that this isn't just "the wrong way to do it". It doesn't actually fix the problem it's supposed to fix, therefore it's actually wrong to say it's a functioning patch.

Of course, but their boss doesn’t know that (or care about it), he just wants to see the fixed bug graph line approach the total bug graphline.

It’ll be totally explainable as engineer failure if something somehow doesn’t work.

Apparently I do? Not sure what you want to hear here, but management does listen to me and my engineering peers. Sometimes things are a bit gray and fuzzy, but in this case here where they definitely are not, I am absolutely certain that there would be no overriding of our arguments.

That's awesome, actually. For me, it's not as bad as Cisco seems, but there are definitely times I get overruled and have to take shortcuts that I'm not always comfortable taking.