alt Hacker NewsThe sad part is that most employers don't care particularly about performance optimization skills (the economics don't work out, they can often just fix the problem cheaper with more hardware—and even if they can't, they mostly don't bear the cost themselves).
The fun part is that when your employer _does_ care about software optimization, few people are actually good at it and your skills are more exclusive :-)
This is true until they see the AWS bill after moving all their infrastructure there in a difficult to undo manner.
Suddenly they are very aware of the costs of inefficient software.