[dabinat]

One thing I’ve learned is that you should be wary of spending too much time on things that customers don’t see. Customers don’t care about backend engineering unless it results in benefits they can actually see, and if you spend too long on invisible features they’ll think your platform is stagnant and move somewhere else.

[CharlieDigital]

    > ...you should be wary of spending too much time on things that customers don’t see

I don't think this is entirely true because there are some things that will help you ship faster like good architecture and a system design that is as simple as possible. These are worth investing, despite their obscurity to the end user, because doing it well can result in a faster pipeline and more stability.

[dedge]

I would say this is fine, provided it’s in service of releasing value.

It’s when the invisible stuff becomes a chore, and blocks or slows down releasing value, such as worrying about micro services.