In the spirit of “if you can’t fix it, feature it”, the code does have impeccable error recovery,

Ouch. That sentence gave me flashbacks to a code base I've been trying to forget.

That code transitioned seamlessly...Critical business requirements relied on panic error catch code to remain implemented in specific ways. The control flow of critical features routinely fell into the "everything is on fire" error catch-all and then escaped from it.

When one of the senior developers discovered this behavior, they confirmed that the all-hands alerts being sent out were already muted, and then got on with their lives.

Shudder