That is nonsense, because:
1. Url pattern has no impact on site speed
2. Link that contains ? and & signs is not considered as friendly
3. Url is created for robots, not for humans
4. Robots does not differentiate between ugly/not ugly urls
5. Developers has no reason to know how url should look like, as they do what they got from business
6. Fact that random site use particular url does not mean anything