This is why web performance needs to be something you actively and seriously measure: if you have a solid low-latency connection, you may have a completely different experience from someone with a high latency or packet loss connection which really amplifies the delay for each resource. This is compounded by developers almost always having the sites they work on cached and upgrading their hardware much faster than average, so it's easy to forget how painful all of that code is for e.g. an Android user on an average network when you mostly use an iPhone 6S over LTE / fiber.
Here's Medium with a 10s load-time over a simulated cellular connection:
Yeah, I try to believe anything about web performance until I measure it, not because I think people are trying to be deceptive but just because it's so easy to waste time in the wrong place if you don't have solid data.
Not everyone that might be interested in reading a Medium post lives in a country blessed with lightning-fast internet infrastructure. A large percentage of the world's population accesses the internet only through a phone. Even in here in the U.S. where I live there are people who fall into both the aforementioned categories.
Are you connecting to the internet using a potato?