[nine_k]

Exactly. Going for something that shaves 5% off your hosting bill or your build time only makes sense when you are already colossal. But something that halves your bill, or halves your build time, or halves your latency, is likely impactful if your project achieves the scale when the proceeds from it can support you.

And very often an optimization improves things not by factor of 1.1 but by factor of 10 or more.

OTOH it's worth to be mindful of your "tech debt" as a "tech credit" you took to be able to do more important things before it's time to repay. Cutting your hosting bill from $100 to $50 may be much less important than doubling your revenue from $500 to $1000.