That's a failure from the dev and management.

Being able to find and get repeatable good results from contractors across the globe and manage them is a skill in itself.

I like this because it's a really off the wall take, but it also feels a little bit like the sort of reasoning that gets you tangled up with a Bernie Madoff type figure.

It's true that unscrupulous people are often very effective. But it's also true that they are unscrupulous. Leaning into lack of scruples probably isn't the most stable of pro business strats, but I imagine it works out sometimes.