Hanlon's razor is a classic aphorism I'm sure you have heard before: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I've found that neither malice nor stupidity is the most common reason when you don't understand why something is in a certain way. Instead, the root cause is probably just that they didn't have time yet. This happens all the time at startups (maybe a bit less at big companies, for reasons I'll get back to).
Some examples of things I hear all the time:
-
I don't understand why team X isn't working on feature idea Y. It's such an obvious thing to do!
-
Why is bug Z still present? Hasn't it been known for a really long time? I don't understand why they aren't fixing it?
-
I don't get why HR team still doesn't offer perk W. So many other companies have that!
-
I've told my manager that we need a process for thing V but it still hasn't happened!
Of course, why these things never happened is that something else was more important. Quoting Wikipedia on Opportunity cost:
When an option is chosen from alternatives, the opportunity cost is the "cost" incurred by not enjoying the benefit associated with the best alternative choice. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as "the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen." In simple terms, opportunity cost is the benefit not received as a result of not selecting the next best option.
Thus I've started telling people: Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by opportunity cost.