If gross sales is literally the only important metric in software engineering we've already failed.
Though on the cost side security breaches can be expensive, as can the endless task of updates and maintenance required for a live server. Live servers can also be a scaling bottleneck, often that isn't too important but it would be for anything that is highly seasonal or has large spikes of use during Black Friday events or similar.
Context matters, you've boiled it down way too far. Gross sales is a primary metric for the business, that isn't necessarily and shouldn't be a primary goal for the engineers building the software.
> For the engineer writing code, I would absolutely expect they have different priorities and metrics than the business or accounting department.
And yet the business has that expectation.
> I personally wouldn't even consider hiring a dev who makes clear that the only metric they care about is gross sales.
Yes, you would, as you are instructed to. The only difference is that you have deluded yourself that there are interim metrics that actually matter, when they are all lossy abstractions of revenue or profit.
Though on the cost side security breaches can be expensive, as can the endless task of updates and maintenance required for a live server. Live servers can also be a scaling bottleneck, often that isn't too important but it would be for anything that is highly seasonal or has large spikes of use during Black Friday events or similar.