Discussing with project manager is great. That's why PM is there. Discussing with the director of software engineering? Probably completely irrelevant to the Big Problem he or she is currently trying to solve, which is much more likely related to culture, hiring/firing, budget, or strategy. When you tell that person that you are shipping a suboptimal product for reason X, they may truly want to help, but have no context to actually do it, and have much bigger fish to fry besides.