[Ylano]

Having something intentionally non-essential to cut is much better than discovering under pressure that everything is load-bearing

[iTokio]

It’s also an old devops trick to put some GB files on the FS of critical systems (databases, ..) when there are no way to dynamically add more space/volumes and monitoring is not trusted.

Bit hard to explain though.

[genxy]

I think sacrificial ballast would be a good term, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballast

[bijowo1676]

sandbagging, nice trick. I know its used in project management, where you give conservative estimates to account for some necessary refactoring work (but never tell management you will be refactoring, cause they dont want to pay for that)