Exactly, today it seems like an excuse to not think at all, and even if you call out something what will definitely not scale (e.g. your stupid O(n^3) approach will blow up even already going to 100 items, and you know your max will be more around 1000, just as an abstract example)... and those guys laughing at you with premature optimization blah at the same time well knowing and muttering "the prototype becomes the product" and you know where you will end with this planned tech debt having consequences on the whole architecture.. all could have been avoided with just a little more being less lazy and telling bs about premature optimization.