[ryangittins]

This is a fantastic analogy for something which has bothered me for years! One example which comes to mind is pushback received on a pull request for a cron job. This script did some heavy lifting so it took a few minutes to run.

The reviewer suggested all sorts of minor optimizations so a script which runs once per week in the middle of the night with no one waiting on it could run tens of seconds faster. A complete waste of time and effort to my mind, and one understandable as the OP describes: a technical challenge which, when solved, equates to zero consumer upside.

[louison11]

Glad you liked the analogy! Yes, keeping this in mind is useful for developers, not just product people. It's tempting to fix or automate things that don't need it. I think there is a meme that goes "I could have done this in 2 minutes, but I chose to spend 2 days automating it instead." Sums it all up :-)