Cost savings don’t make you a hero. They make you late.
In FinOps, savings are celebrated like trophies. The problem? They are trophies from yesterday. A reduction in spend is just evidence that we were overspending before. It’s not a forward-looking achievement — it’s a correction of the past.
Sunk cost is brutal that way: the money is already gone. The “savings” you generate only prove that those dollars never needed to leave in the first place.
Leadership loves to parade cost savings as strategic wins. But let’s be honest — they are not wins. They are receipts of mistakes.
The real merit in FinOps is not about how much you saved last quarter. It’s about how efficiently you run today and how resilient you’ll be tomorrow. The past can’t justify future merit.
So next time someone flashes a slide with “millions saved,” ask the uncomfortable question: why was that waste allowed to happen in the first place?
Cost Savings are dusty trophies
