I've had similar messages articulated to me by my manager, and have found myself articulating similar messages to my team. In my team, the key is for the state

I've had similar messages articulated to me by my manager, and have found myself articulating similar messages to my team. In my team, the key is for the state of the project/product we manage, cost optimization is likely one of the lowest ROI activities we can spend too much time on. That doesn't mean we don't tackle some clear low hanging fruit when we see it, or use low hanging fruit as training opportunities to onboard new team members, but that we need to be conscious on where we make investments, and for the stage we're at, the more important investment is into areas that make our product more appealing to more customers. I think it's easy to say someone, like an intern could pay for themselves with savings. But this to me overlooks that someone has to manage that intern, get them into change management, review the work, investigate mistakes or interruptions from the changes, etc. And then they're still the lowest earning employee, since most of us aren't hired to pay for ourselves, but actually to turn a profit for the company. So while I'm not sure I agree with the message "whereas increases in income are larger and compound better.", I certainly understand and have pushed a similar message, that we be conscious on where we're spending our time, and that we're selecting the highest impact activities based on the resources and team we have. Sometimes that may be fixing high wastage, but very frequently that will be investing into the product. And I think for the stage of the product we manage, that is the best choice for us.