What I meant by that example wasn't an existential threat (I agree if you're there it's already too late), but to contrast how the business people are thinking.

What I meant by that example wasn't an existential threat (I agree if you're there it's already too late), but to contrast how the business people are thinking. As in, they're thinking "here's $1MM of ARR that's likely to go to our competitor away if we don't ship this feature" when the engineer is asking them to get time to clean up the code. I'm not saying that clean code is a waste of time - it is incredibly valuable! I'm an engineer, and I value good architecture a lot. I'm saying that to get organizational support for it means that we have to get better at demonstrating that value to non-engineers, which will both hold us as engineers accountable to working on the highest impact things (is delaying features worth the potential short term ARR loss or slower customer acquisition? We should have a good answer for that) and help the business balance long and short term prospects.