Yes, and just to express the same idea from a different perspective... you need to deliver the features needed by your business.
In a small, simple, established site, those needs don't change often, so the code doesn't change often, and you can focus more on performance than maintainability, as well as spend your efforts on non-coding tasks.
In a startup when you are finding your market and seeking product/market fit, and you've got investors demanding speedy delivery of a product to customers, the attempted solution is often a large team with fast and numerous code changes. And then you do have to optimize for the devs, because even though the final goal is customer satisfaction, devs need to perform efficiently to hit that goal.
The needs of the codebase still tie back to the needs of the business. One answer does not fit all.
In a small, simple, established site, those needs don't change often, so the code doesn't change often, and you can focus more on performance than maintainability, as well as spend your efforts on non-coding tasks.
In a startup when you are finding your market and seeking product/market fit, and you've got investors demanding speedy delivery of a product to customers, the attempted solution is often a large team with fast and numerous code changes. And then you do have to optimize for the devs, because even though the final goal is customer satisfaction, devs need to perform efficiently to hit that goal.
The needs of the codebase still tie back to the needs of the business. One answer does not fit all.