this is a problem on a company/culture level, a root cause is probably capitalism and pursuing for never ending growth.
Because growth is most of the time translated as acquiring more users/customers. Eventually making more money out of them.
Somewhere in the distant future, making money becomes cost saving, this is when companies start thinking about how can we cut the cost and such projects/explorations become relevant.
Even then it is not easy to sell as a project. Because there are so many unknowns, discussion goes like:
me: hey, I see spikes in CPU/mem usage, want to investigate why.
Product: is it important now?
me: I don't exactly know, but it might end up saving our instance costs.
Product: how many instances we are talking about?
me: I don't know yet how big is the problem, depends on what would be the result
Product: how long does it take you to do a research?
me: I don't know what is the problem yet, so I can't evaluate how long it takes to find it.
Product: maybe we shouldn't do it then?
me: (again) but it might end up saving our instance costs.
Product: ok, do you think you can finish investigation in 2 days and share with me timeline and metrics this project would improve?
me: ok, let's forget about this shit we made. what is a next "metric improving, highly visible" project we have?
Product: cool, I want you to work on this super exciting "Move button from Page A to Page B" project