So make cost optimization cool. I always enjoyed getting rid of production hardware and running as lean as possible within operational constraints. Incentivize cost reduction with benefits proportional to the savings.
You know what’s cooler than an expensive thing? A high quality thing with higher margins. A very well known and highly profitable company has taken that model pretty far (like trillions in valuation far).
Higher margins are not really cool unless you share them, which the engineers probably did not.
Engineers arent really responsible for these types of attitudes though. Management are. By and large engineers will do as they are requested.
I find it far more plausible that costs ballooned due to an empire building dynamic by management than because engineers arm twisted them into building something "cool". Same reason Uber has, like, 150 people working on a mobile app.
You know what’s cooler than an expensive thing? A high quality thing with higher margins. A very well known and highly profitable company has taken that model pretty far (like trillions in valuation far).