Production isn't about speed, efficiency, or obviously "clever hacks." If I have to sacrifice 50% of my efficiency to ensure that I never get called on Sunday

Production isn't about speed, efficiency, or obviously "clever hacks." If I have to sacrifice 50% of my efficiency to ensure that I never get called on Sunday at 3am to fix a broken system, no kidding, I'll make that trade every time. Production is about _reliability_. And writing reliable code is 10x harder than writing "fast" code.