While you are right that these libraries are super optimized, even adding a few features to the machine learning model added significant latency to the ad servi

While you are right that these libraries are super optimized, even adding a few features to the machine learning model added significant latency to the ad serving system (about 0.1ms at 99%-ile, which was a blocker for getting into production). What the more senior engineers showed me that the trick is to understand other parts of the request and find optimizations that I can apply at those stages, and put in the same experiment that I want to launch instead of hyperoptimizing my own code. Of course you are right that I myself was looking for more technical projects (the only problem was that my team was the one working at night and weekends as well, which I refused to do at that point in my life, as I wasn't in my 20s anymore).