The fundamental issue is that optimizing things, paying down tech debt, maintenance, etc just don’t get nearly the same fanfare as new features or product launches. I don’t blame people, because the latter is flashier, and more understood by nontechnical folks in the business.
For people like me who work behind the scenes, you need a trusted manager who understands the importance of your work and will go to bat for you, and/or you need to regularly publicize your accomplishments in a measurable, easily understood way. For me, that means posting a tidbit in Slack whenever I make a noteworthy change.
I wish my sort of work was respected inline with its business impact, but alas, it’s harder to measure or communicate things like “developer time saved” vs “feature X bumped sales by y%.”