If it takes a programmer an hour to optimize something that saves a second each time it is run, management thinks that is a complete waste since you have to run

If it takes a programmer an hour to optimize something that saves a second each time it is run, management thinks that is a complete waste since you have to run it 3600 times to 'break even'. You might think that their thinking would change when you point out that the code is run millions of times each day on computers all over the world, so those saved seconds will really add up. But all those millions of saved seconds do not affect the company's bottom line. Other people reap the benefits of the saved time (and power usage, and heat generated, and ...) but not the company that wrote the code. So it is still a complete waste in their minds. Multiply this thinking across millions of programs and you get today's situation of slow, bloated code everywhere.