When the PM views it with ideal network conditions they assume it's more than ready. At this point their focus is on shipping sooner so the next thing can be worked on. The devs can never talk them back. Users then complain on Twitter about the crappy perf.

This is a process and cultural failure too. The perf can be quantified and tracked to some extent. Even proxy metrics like the growth of assets over time can help.

Cultural events like poor handling of weekly demo days can create undue pressure on shipping poor implementations. Someone implements a great idea badly, it catches management attention (or helps the sales team), and next Monday it gets released. Over time this behavior can hurt customers and it always frustrates internal efforts to do the right things for perf.

The problem isn't people don't know. The problem is the software is drowning in layers of complexity and abstraction, and it's all in JavaScript not an optimized native language.