[johnnyanmac]

I imagine the hard part isn't the literal building of the stuff. It's the months or years of politics, beauracracy, and bids needed to get to a point where you can build it.

That's not to discount the intensity of the labor. Just that the labor is rarely the bottleneck in building stuff.

[ravenstine]

I see what you're saying, and our labor isn't the bottleneck from the perspective of engineers. However, I'm pretty sure that business leadership would beg to differ. They see engineering as a necessary evil to getting their products out the window, and it can never be done fast enough. The solution is the bottleneck in their eyes. Engineers have a better understanding of why they do what they do, hence they get that their work isn't inherently a bottleneck in spite of how challenging it can be.

But yes, in reality, you're correct that programming itself is not (or should not) be a bottleneck, but the process around developing a product definitely can be. The irony here is that this bottleneck usually gets worse the more corporate a business becomes and the more they try to treat programming as if it were a bottleneck. Not a day goes by that my job isn't made more difficult because the business wants greater agility and efficiency.