You haven't been in devops 'hell', then! ;-). Has been many years for me, but SSHing into a server with a high load and trying to diagnose = now sounds like training camp to me, hah.
I remember waiting multiple minutes on a production system on more than 1 occasion! =D
each keystroke has to be sent to Redwood City to be individually massaged and returned
Is it an older terminal-based system? Lots of those were designed (and still in use, 40+ years later). Usually it's not a big deal, in fact faster than modern interfaces, because they're built for decades-old hardware and low baud rates. Of course if you're still running the original hardware or have really screwed things up then performance goes out the window.
