My experience has been that each additional multiple of revenue has a certain amount of effort increase that is relatively fixed. Likewise, each additional percentage of cost reduction has an effort cost that is relatively fixed.

If you do the math, then increasing your revenue by 2x doesn’t cost 2x the effort. But one additional percentage point of cost reduction might well cost 2x the effort.

Sadly, most employers I’ve known do not seem to understand this thing called math.