Soft Delete VS hard Delete

Is this extra work in the programming back end worth the hassle?

It depends heavily on what you are building and what your end goals are.

If you are building your own toolset that you will use for most, if not all, future development, I'd say it's probably worth considering putting it in from the start.

If you are building your own product, but it's one off project so the code is not shared with future projects, you'd probably have to consider if adding soft-delete is more important than adding some business critical functionality.

If you are working on fixed budget client project, and they haven't specifically asked for it, not that I'm advocating putting in minimum effort for client work, effectively they are probably more interested in their business logic going in instead of nice to have features, especially if their budget is stretched.

If it's long term client project or project you do for your employer, so you do want to keep good long term relationship, it could be nice way to add cherry on top, earn some brownie-points.