Unpredictable Function Timeouts

Error: Synchronous function execution timed out. Use asynchronous execution instead, or ensure the execution duration doesn't exceed 30 seconds. Error Code: 408

I have a simple function (call it: abc) which returns some attribute from a collection bty taking another as input. ABC is polled by a cron that runs every minute in dev and every hour when idle (usually hits function ABC 15-25 times in a go whenever it runs.

ABC is also polled at times from frontend, about 20 times with interval of 6 secs during some operations.

The current timeout of this is 30 s. The execution of this function sometimes randomly times out.

From my logic it's neither that computationally heavy (since it just returns a simple attribute) nor is the polling frequency that high currently. What could be the issue and how to make the timeout more predictable.