[yuribro]

> But I'm not the primary dev: I have no familiarity with the code base, I have little idea what it is doing (and yes, I've asked). As I'm not a dev of the code (and have no time to become one — our agile sprint planning will never allow time for that, and, since I'm not one of the devs) I'm not able to add the information I need to the code to get the insights into answering "why is it eating up most of the compute?".

It looks like you identified the root causes of the problem here: the fact that you're not the dev doesn't have to be a problem. It's the fact that it's under-documented & has bad metrics.

While everyone understands that we will always have bugs and issues (at least while we keep working in the current paradigm for software development), having good designs, documentation and metrics is attainable. It just has to be prioritized by management.

> "our agile sprint planning will never allow time for that"

Sounds like those who call the shots either don't understand the cost of not doing these things, or believe that it's more cost effective not to do them.