The overwhelming majority of code isn't slow because it used the wrong algorithm, it's because the Product team can't demo or show off an increase in efficiency

The overwhelming majority of code isn't slow because it used the wrong algorithm, it's because the Product team can't demo or show off an increase in efficiency. It's because they aren't measured by their ability to reduce or control the growth of the AWS bill. And they probably wouldn't have the knowledge to ascertain a reasonable bill. So they push deadlines which pushes devs to take ugly but fast to write solutions using high level languages. Also, performance improvements pay for themselves over months and years while new features usually pay for themselves faster (at least they do in forecasts). And finally, touching working code to make a performance improvement necessarily has some risk and that risk might be worth more than a year of cost savings from the improvement.