[grepfru_it]

>push for organizational improvements

doesn't pay the light bill

> a cog in a feature factory

pays the light bills.

YMMV

[busterarm]

Disagree. The answer is somewhere in the middle.

Every time some failing startup does a large layoff round, there's always questions of "why does X need Y many engineers?". Too many cogs in a broken organization is just burning dollars and electricity.

[grepfru_it]

do things manually for as long as possible until you need to automate it.

[busterarm]

At some point automating becomes a full-time job. And that's literally what I do.