This is especially nice in the age of AI. I (the graybeard senior developer) does all the risky refactoring. I can take a performance issue and turn it into six regressions in half a day ($100). Then everyone is impressed when I let Opus fix these regressions in 20 minutes and $2 worth of AI.
No one notices when you cut 20% of some expensive process but cause no regressions.
No one notices when you cut 20% of some expensive process but cause no regressions.