"Your aim should be delivering value, which sometimes means making long term investments that improve the development environment."
That makes sense as long as it also matches the employee's goal of being paid for the work they do. If you work at a place like my job, you will never be promoted if you do this necessary behind the scenes stuff. It's as if the motto is "if the business user doesn't see it, it never happened". Sucks if you're spending a lot time on things that are supposed to be invisible to a user, like security or availability.
That makes sense as long as it also matches the employee's goal of being paid for the work they do. If you work at a place like my job, you will never be promoted if you do this necessary behind the scenes stuff. It's as if the motto is "if the business user doesn't see it, it never happened". Sucks if you're spending a lot time on things that are supposed to be invisible to a user, like security or availability.