> In my experience so far, it's typically the case that the 20 second DB query will annoy people for months or years - it won't get solved until enough people r

> In my experience so far, it's typically the case that the 20 second DB query will annoy people for months or years - it won't get solved until enough people raise enough of a stink that someone finally prioritizes it. Among the many things I’ve learned as a self taught dev: you can be the person who raises enough of a stink if you care a lot. It’s not a thing you want to invoke frequently, but it’s a thing you very probably have power to invoke where it matters most. If you can make a good business case (or any case for user success that impairs your org), you have very good odds of being able to pursue it in any but the most toxic situations. If you can link $thing-you-want-to-pursue to other probably shinier biz/org goals, you’re 99% of the way there.