Google cuts epsilon’s in engineering cost that operate on efficiencies of 10s of thousands engineers or engineering components that underpin multiple high-value products. They have entire teams of very senior engineers dedicated to this problem. Conversely, a smaller project wouldn’t demand this kind of attention because solutions don’t scale well and so are managed as local costs at the most local level possible.

What kind of scale project are you and your friend working for and which component is the problem in?

Note that I’m not disagreeing with the consequences being that there are ever growing tech debt that will live on forever and you just try to manage that and fit that into “fixit week” or “20% time”. That’s kind of the discount for why they still pay the crazy salaries for all work, not just in the teams closest to the revenue generation.