[katzgrau]

> Your score shot back down to 72, you know have new areas to investigate, super cool !

I generally do not find it "super cool" when I suddenly/unexpectedly have new areas to investigate.

In most cases, the developer dealing with lighthouse scores is someone who just built a website to a client's spec, only to find out that there are things that it flags which are very time consuming to deal with. Set expectations all you want, but they want a near 100%.

To do all that work only for the score to drop later makes you as a developer look bad. A client who doesn't know any better will suspect you did faulty work.

[dgb23]

Be proactive and inform your clients of the change. You get to do performance work, they feel taken care of by an expert, their visitors have a better experience, everyone wins!

[katzgrau]

> You get to do performance work, they feel taken care of by an expert, their visitors have a better experience, everyone wins!

Really though? It usually means:

* The fixes can require non-trivial changes that take an unknown amount of time to fix

* The client has to pay you for something that probably wasn't budgeted

* You have to fit in more work. If you're good at getting clients and you have a full schedule, it can throw a wrench in.

I'm not sure most freelance devs delight in doing suddenly imposed "performance work." Maybe the first time or two it's interesting, after that it's just annoying.