In Hollywood set design, you need to optimize in a way that optimizes for the most impact on screen–money spent off screen is effectively useless to the end result, the film.
This is a good analogy for product work. Product work is hard because it necessitates change and therefore can involve significant internal effort (off screen to continue the analogy) to produce the end result (on screen), even if it’s small.
See also:
- patio11’s blog post ‘What Working At Stripe Has Been Like’ which talks about working in hypergrowth and why ‘off screen’ effort/spend is natural and necessary.