When I worked at a big tech company, the life quality of software engineers was undergoing what old timers perceived as a significant decline.
The official response of the CFO was that the quality can't be declining that much because people aren't quitting an an accelerating rate.
This is the same phenomenon as your suspicion. There's some metric (e.g. people keep buying our widgets) and you stress test demand for it by making it cheaper to produce. If demand holds up there's no problem from the company's perspective.
From the consumer's perspective, every project is doing this and the entire world is declining in quality but prices aren't going down.
The official response of the CFO was that the quality can't be declining that much because people aren't quitting an an accelerating rate.
This is the same phenomenon as your suspicion. There's some metric (e.g. people keep buying our widgets) and you stress test demand for it by making it cheaper to produce. If demand holds up there's no problem from the company's perspective.
From the consumer's perspective, every project is doing this and the entire world is declining in quality but prices aren't going down.