[hinkley]

And even when it's "computer stuff" you find out that there aren't that many n^2 problems to solve, and you'll recall every n^3 problem you fix because they almost never happen.

Mostly what you deal with is architectural problems. And when it comes time to fix slow code, the problem won't be O(n^2) code but a mountain of code where the constant factor C is somewhere between log(n) and sqrt(n).