Of course, we shouldn't expect the CEO of the PO to dig into code, and we shouldn't excuse the standards of engineers.
To continue the restaurant analogy, if customers are consistently getting food poisoning due to the sloppy hygiene of the kitchens then the buck stops with the restaurant owner. They'd need to diagnose the issue, put in place better training and supervision of the cooks and have systems to regularly check that standards are being met
Right. But also, if a surgeon doesn't wash their hands and a patient dies as a result, the surgeon is at fault. Not the hospital's management team. Or, not just the hospital's management team.
To continue the restaurant analogy, if customers are consistently getting food poisoning due to the sloppy hygiene of the kitchens then the buck stops with the restaurant owner. They'd need to diagnose the issue, put in place better training and supervision of the cooks and have systems to regularly check that standards are being met