Before I got a job as a developer, which happened by chance because someone noticed that I was a hobbyist programmer, I actually worked as a kitchen help.
A large chunk of that was cleaning and dishwashing.
Let me tell you that if I didn’t have a very fast dishwasher, I couldn’t do my job well. I was already juggling the time between supporting the cooks, keeping stuff clean and the dishwasher going. I used a fast and effective dishwasher, but any speed improvement would be welcome, among other things.
Engineers sometimes optimize for the wrong things, if they’re not involved with decisions and out of the loop.
But the reality is that there’s many more things that could benefit from optimization than things that don’t.
People definitely care about fast feedback loops and less time spent waiting. They might not always tell you in advance, because they assume it is like it is, but they _will_ tell you after the fact.
People who don’t care are typically disconnected from actual usage.
Whether that’s bosses and consultants who tell stories about “man hours vs cpu clocks” or engineers who excuse themselves with “premature optimization...”: they have that thing in common where they don’t know how it feels to wash a mountain of dirty dishes by hand, because the dishwasher cannot keep up.