That's horrible. I have several friends from different origin countries (including USA) who have received Swiss citizenships (which the American right wing holds up as some sort of uber-restrictive standard) in half that time.
The time to naturalize in Switzerland is now 10 years (it used to be a bit longer) unless married to a Swiss citizen, in which case it's shorter. Include that plus the processing time and assuming your friends were in one of the right residence status categories during their entire time in Switzerland, it would have taken them at least 11 years or so.