I've been on the implementation side of this kind of thing more times than I'm proud of. Hardcoded delays are especially prevalent in systems which attempt to

I've been on the implementation side of this kind of thing more times than I'm proud of. Hardcoded delays are especially prevalent in systems which attempt to emulate a human operator, such as virtual assistants which are starting to replace human live chat agents. The excuse is always UX related. Progressive disclosure is cited a /lot/. Apparently users get a better experience when systems pretend to be human and respond slowly, so we would hardcode delays which were a function of the length of the response message.