I am not sure why the manager should be shocked if an engineer asks for these kinds of clarification. Those are exactly the info I need to point out that this might very well be a problem with service XYZ, and that we might need to scale up the database instead of rewriting the frontend in react.

My react frontend is made up, but my actual example is the CTO (no background in software) suggesting we move our embedded product from linux to android because "our updater is broken and i read that android has a great updater," while the issue was faulty flash chips where the brownout protection bit could not be set.

(Moving from linux to android for an embedded product means you basically have to rewrite absolutely everything since the userland is different, for a stack that is under the control of a single company, and is rarely used outside of mobile devices and automotive. And it still won't fix broken flash chips).

This is an order of magnitude more egregious than the react example I transformed it into, and also why I left the company. If I can't present my expertise and get listened to for such an important decision, there really is nowhere for me to go.