Attention Wiley E. Coyote Super Genius coworker! Some salient points.

1) saying there's no way to speed up your unoptimized Matlab code is a sure way to get me really interested in the problem.

2) telling everyone the result of my work is horrible and slower than your code, even when it runs in 0.4x the time and gives identical results, is a sure way to get me really pissed off.

3) either of the above is a sure way to get me to ignore all other projects and miss more than a few deadlines.