> At some point some software engineer had to sit down, look at it, and say, "looks good to ship to production"

Only true if you replace "software engineer" with "person". Just because someone was paid to build it doesn't mean they thought it was a good idea or ready.

At some point someone on the management side said "we want this and we're writing the check", the developer complained, and the project manager said "I know, I agree with you, but it's out of our hands"

I can’t imagine UX designers didn’t push back on this… it’s so obviously bad. PMs had their back to a wall.

More like "It fulfills the requirements, ship and collect my compensation"