[jmchuster]

I don't understand how pivoting is an example of the value of testing. Wouldn't it instead show how investing in tests didn't pay off because the codebase got scrapped for another? Your tests pay themselves each time you adjust code that is tested. But there are many cases where you never end up adjusting the code, such as when that whole service is scrapped, or it was simple enough that it never got touched again.

The value of tests amplify with the number of people adjusting the code, and with the time range over which this is happening. These are both conditions that minimize themselves at early-stage startups.

Now, of course, caveat is, you need to know how to strike the right balances and tradeoffs as an engineer to get the right results for the right amount of effort. But that's what startup engineering is about.