I was one of those initiators of a rewrite. And I was facing a real problem: the codebase was in C, all C developers except me left, I was going to leave too, and both our HR department and an external consulting firm failed to find a competent C developer to replace me.

So I said: screw performance, we are rewriting this thing into Go, as that's what our existing developers were willing to work with - with the intention of leaving when this would be done.

And the day I finally submitted my resignation letter, a competent C developer was found, and later I heard that the Go rewrite was scrapped.