The problem was not so much that the operation took 15-25 seconds. It was that it added 15-25 seconds to run the tests. We basically ran this testing suite ever

The problem was not so much that the operation took 15-25 seconds. It was that it added 15-25 seconds to run the tests. We basically ran this testing suite every time we added a couple of lines to the codebase to make sure we were on the right track (too much maybe?). So the problem was that it made our development workflow slower, not that the operation being tested was slow.