alt Hacker NewsMost employees are unmotivated and mediocre-at-best, across every role and industry because most people are (rightly) just showing up to get paid. Engineers are no different, we are not special. Most engineers do not have the incentive to go out of their way to improve their product when keeping this as-is is easier for them. Regardless of whether the OPs product is good, almost all of the engineer opposition would come from engineers not wanting to deal with integrating some new thing that non-engineers want because it’s more work.
If you think most engineers are evaluating things based on the value it’ll drive for their product, you’ve lived a lucky career (and long may it continue).
An engineer's job is to add the features that management asks to be added. Engineers who fight with management decisions on adding features to a product are almost always exactly the ones who care a lot about the product - the path of last resistance is to just do what you're asked, since that's what you're paid for.
Management wants to add Google ads to their premium offline app? Sure, they'll work to add that, who cares. Whether they spend two months building this feature or another, they're getting paid the same amount.