I mean that their piece pretty much needed to be gutted or discarded , and my vote was on discarding . I think it was probably the hardest critique I ever had to write , because a ) I don't normally like to be that negative and b ) I really , reeeeeeally wanted to like her work because she was a teacher of mine and because she was a really nice person . I just couldn't , and it's not in my nature to lie . 
Question: Why does the writer think the piece needed to be discarded ?
Because they think the piece is poor quality .