> 10% increases are quite large!

You have to ask yourself, 10% of what? I don’t usually mind throwing 10% more compute or memory at a problem but I do mind if its 10x more. I’ve shipped 100x perf improvements in the past where 1.5x would have been a waste of engineering time. A more typical case is a 10x or 20x improvement that’s worth a few days coding. Now, if I’m working on a mature system that’s had tens of thousands of engineering hours devoted to it, and is used by thousands of users, then I might be quite happy with 10%. Though I also may not! The broader context matters.