Performance stopped being an engineering preference the moment it started moving conversion rates and search visibility in measurable increments.
There is a version of the performance conversation that never reaches the executive floor: milliseconds, bundle sizes, hydration strategies. There is another version that always does: revenue per session, organic visibility, cost per acquisition.
They are the same conversation. In our commerce engagements, a one-second improvement in Largest Contentful Paint has consistently correlated with a mid-single-digit conversion uplift — enough to fund the engineering work several times over within a quarter.
The operational answer is a performance budget enforced in continuous integration. If a pull request exceeds the budget, it does not merge. This removes performance from the realm of good intentions and places it in the realm of policy.
Report it monthly, alongside commercial metrics, in language the board already uses. Performance defended quarterly is performance that degrades quietly between reviews.