You're absolutely right. I have heard that argument first had used as a means to shut down an initiative as well. These philosophies require massive judgement calls from engineering leadership with payback periods tracked in years, not quarterly OKRs.

The capacity of engineering organizations to successfully undertake multi quarter efforts is probably the best sign of competence. There seems to be a lot of short term thinking nowadays with projects based on quarters and those that don't bear fruit getting canned. Without long term investments, the org has to continuously put out fires which hobbles it and ultimately affects its ability to compete with other companies.

They don't mind long term investment in a product, but they do mind long term investment in improving their operational practices. Propose they spend 3 mil on a new team to build some new service? Sure, go ahead! Propose they spend 3 mil on a project to continuously improve practices that will maximize efficiency, speed up development for all products, increase quality overall, and reduce headcount? Unnecessary cost, let's just hire a consultant for 6 months.