The implication here is that after 8 years of having issues management has not intentionally hired UX designers or programmers to work on AI features over people who could help build more reliability.

We've reframed this argument from the original "stop punching down" to, now "well, managements allocation of resources is fine because they have staff that would otherwise do nothing".

Thing is, I agree with the base of your argument, over the course of a quarter (or 3, or even 5..) the release of a feature does not mean that resources have been taken from the core.

However... it's been a really long time, and now we're hitting a critical point where the added load of AI, the rot that has been allowed to set in at the core, and the fact that they haven't been allocating staff to improving those pieces is hitting an inflection point.

I can't say for sure, as I don't work there, but I think if the trend is going lower for literally years: management could have changed course.

Those frontend designers didn't hire themselves and normal turnover is something like 5% for a healthy org: there was a conscious effort there. And those feature designers on AI can definitely have done work on reliability.