> If he were more politically savvy, he'd build the thing in Python and then, if the software were to run on 100,000 boxes, rewrite performance-critical pieces

> If he were more politically savvy, he'd build the thing in Python and then, if the software were to run on 100,000 boxes, rewrite performance-critical pieces in C++, and justify a bonus for himself by pointing to the 20,000 CPUs that were just deprovisioned. And a year later, a month before bonuses are disbursed, he can rewrite another performance-critical component. This is good for him (he actually gets recognized, instead of being that annoying guy who bludgeoned a team into writing C++ and taking 4x as long to deliver an MVP) and for the business (only performance-critical components, with price tags large enough for him to care, get rewritten). Call it political savvy if you want, but anybody that's actually been trained as an engineer (I mean formal engineering, not just computer science) knows that "good enough at low cost" beats "ideal at any cost" ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Engineers shouldn't need political motivation for considering all aspects of a problem, instead of just the technical ones. It's our job.