I don’t think so. I definitely know tech people who get a particular idea in their head and will debug it to hell and back before taking a step back and realizing the obvious thing they missed. I’ve definitely done it before myself.

> Also why not lay a cable.

It sounds like they were trying to run a network between two properties that weren’t adjacent. They may not have had permission from the neighbor in the middle to lay cable on their property, or it might’ve required laying a cable across a street.