What is weird to me is that apparently there has not been someone in a position of power in this project that would go "Wait guys, this is not good. Any other ideas? How can we improve?"

No, just roll on with it.

There was a period of time, around 2010-2015 when I really felt that computers were fast. SSDs were getting more affordable and that was a huge improvement, every action was immediately responsive. In 2020, that has somehow been undone. It takes 5 seconds to launch a calculator. Software guys really like to undo all the advances that the hardware guys are doing.

In that period, computers made a significant leap forward, and it took developers some time to catch up and fully utilize surplus performance.

Somebody somewhere is probably running a calculator as an electron app that takes 10 seconds to open.

You don't even need Electron. The "modern" Windows 10 calculator takes a dozen seconds to start on my laptop.

An electron app packaged as a snap.

Why does that take considerable time? I’m curious as to the technical reasons.