I would say it sounds more like "they didn't have the chops/experience to do it" and less like "they didn't want to do it?"
In situations like that my instinct as a developer is to figure out the hard part first. Some sort of prototype to prove that hey, this design works and can serve X requests per second. In other words some basic prototyping and research... a "spike" in scrum/agile terms.
Managers have viewed this as insanity. They think optimization is something you can sprinkle on later. Surprisingly a lot of developers do too.
I've been on two projects where this situation happened. In one I was able to save the project. In the other I wasn't.
If they had tried and failed I would agree it wasn’t that they had the chops. They wouldn’t even try. That was avoiding doing hard things in my book. And honestly, I fully believe they could have done it. And really, it wasn‘t actually hard, it’s change a data structure and do some data mapping. Hence avoiding actual work.
I would say it sounds more like "they didn't have the chops/experience to do it" and less like "they didn't want to do it?"
In situations like that my instinct as a developer is to figure out the hard part first. Some sort of prototype to prove that hey, this design works and can serve X requests per second. In other words some basic prototyping and research... a "spike" in scrum/agile terms.
Managers have viewed this as insanity. They think optimization is something you can sprinkle on later. Surprisingly a lot of developers do too.
I've been on two projects where this situation happened. In one I was able to save the project. In the other I wasn't.