I would also add that it's possible for this dynamic to change as a company grows. I speak from personal experience - successful e-commerce startup where I am

I would also add that it's possible for this dynamic to change as a company grows. I speak from personal experience - successful e-commerce startup where I am director of web. Year 1 was about fast growth. We built a home-grown e-commerce platform, and made it scale. Lots of interesting challenges for hackers and a strong technology focus - improvements to the platform contributed directly to the bottom line. Year 2 has a different emphasis. Many of the technical challenges are now past us. We did such a good job in Year 1 that we don't have to do much WRT scaling, UX optimization etc in Year 2. Year 2 is more about sales and marketing - continuing to find channels to acquire members and getting products into the store that people want (at good prices). This has much less of a technology emphasis than Year 1, and indeed while Year 1 was very exciting, in Year 2 I find it difficult to motivate my team when the tasks at hand are things like "ok guys so we need a modification to our internal admin tool so that marketing can...". Sure, there are constant improvements to be made. We do regular tweaks. We think up mini projects ("site looks weird on Android. ok lets fix that this week"). But the dynamic has most definitely changed and that is just a factor of the type of company this is (it's a sales company) and the stage of growth it is at (nearing a B round of financing).