The developers are aware this is a hindrance, it's just a question of what to do about it.
I've explored some of the possible solutions in the article, such as backfilling where the server automatically fetches some recent posts for profiles you follow (or possibly look at?).
Backfilling is by far the most requested feature on Mastodon's github site, but there are some complications to deal with which are explored in a long thread which I've linked to from the article.