> when we started losing interest about where our code is actually being executed
I don't think we did - it's more that new programmers aren't forced to learn it, and a lot of them are lazy and only here for the money. The result is a lot of people who think all that matters is shipping quickly. To them, it doesn't matter that this will result in lots more work down the road once the product needs to scale up.
Not scaling up until needed is a fine strategy. Most products fail, so they don't ever need to scale up and spending the engineering hours to make it bulletproof is literally wasted effort. Wasting time and money at the start of a companies lifetime makes it more likely the business will go up in the first place. If you need to scale up, you will have lots more revenue to pay for that work than you do at the beginning.
I don't think we did - it's more that new programmers aren't forced to learn it, and a lot of them are lazy and only here for the money. The result is a lot of people who think all that matters is shipping quickly. To them, it doesn't matter that this will result in lots more work down the road once the product needs to scale up.