A lot of people tend to not consider time invested as a measurable resource, and that is a sad thing indeed, as that is one resource that can only be spent.
You're entirely missing the point. If I'm spending a month to optimize some code so that it is 25% faster, these gains don't go away again once I'm done optimizing. They stay in the product for months or years. And this is where the effort pays off.
That seems a sad view on the value of a person.
Shouldn't the whole point of technology and infrastructure be to allow a person to use more resources so as to better[0] allocate their limited time?