Autotools is slow as balls - but then CMake configuration is slow too - a minute if I recall for llvm-project on my M1. Much of the modern Linux build issues are RPM vs DEB packages not playing nice. Rust Cargo has it's own issues with snowflake dependency hell instead of more generic libraries.

GNU Make is a different story. Easy to get core saturation for large workloads. Stanford GG allows you to massively distribute it to thousands of workers. Still very relevant.