I don't think it's purely nerd-sniping. If your story is "at first you are bad, but then you get good", but your example is of a case where you did something fine but then replaced it with something worse, that rather undermines the story.
They then went on to list the errors that this brand new entry level employee had made when writing ... an authentication system ...
I was more than a little shocked when I realized they were serious and hadn't realized the issue was sending the new entry level guy to do that job alone.
I've always seen authn. Where'd you pick this usage up?
For my part, I have not encountered "authn", "authz", or "authk" before. But prior discussion did not even mention the word "authorization", and that seemed worth bringing out in the open.
So, not nonresponsive, just responsive to things you weren't personally interested in.
They way I see it is that it was a case of something that wasn't working, then replaced with something that was working.
I don't know what your metrics about "good" or "bad" are but eventually they got a solution that covered their use cases and the solution was good enough for stakeholders and that is "good".