[former Googler] Yes, I occasionally saw people get highlighted for making optimizations like "this saves 1% in [some important service]". When you're running

[former Googler] Yes, I occasionally saw people get highlighted for making optimizations like "this saves 1% in [some important service]". When you're running millions of machines, 1% is a lot of machines. However, it's also likely the case that the easy 1%s have already been found...