Until you join a FAANG you simply cannot imagine the complexity of the systems and how much has not been automated and how much there is to build.
I've been in Amazon for close to a decade, and I constantly think "I can't believe X hasn't been automated in the 30 years that Amazon has existed and is still done on Excel".
Most engineers will work on new features for at least half of the year, and I personally work on brand new projects or at least features constantly.
Doing work that helps another team will rarely result in getting any credit and is a great way to get stuck in the bottom of the stack rank (top grading or whatever they call it now). So automating anything that integrates across the org chart won't happen because the incentive structure is against it.
That's not true. In fact OP1 and OP2 [1] in Amazon are in majority an intake process for projects requested by other teams. I'd say only half of them come from the team itself.
working in a warehouse, just recently built over the last 4 years, and the pallet management is done via excel. im pretty sure the scanner app is just a frontend.
horrified to think the totes are done the same way.
I've been in Amazon for close to a decade, and I constantly think "I can't believe X hasn't been automated in the 30 years that Amazon has existed and is still done on Excel".
Most engineers will work on new features for at least half of the year, and I personally work on brand new projects or at least features constantly.