The belief that engineers are not doing anything for x amount of time that could be better spent on other immediately measurable things is as old as the profession itself.

Ironically this vanishes when the tables are turned and we ask for things like better hardware or software. There are plenty of us here with stories of how much effort it took to convince employers that SSDs were worth it when they were new, small, and very expensive.

One of the funniest things is how hard it was to get approval for a $100 software license but now people are being encouraged to burn thousands on tokens.