Honest question - how does one provide value in this reality. It’s something I’m trying to understand
You add value when you optimize, debug, and refactor the business operation. Increasingly in old-economy companies, but especially in Silicon Valley companies, the business operation is largely defined in code. So this is something software engineers can do, through well-chosen code changes.
Outside of startups, engineers rarely do this alone. There are executives, business analysts, product managers, data scientists, etc. with very similar tasking. But you want to get into a position where these people see you as a full intellectual partner, not as an implementation resource to type in their already-baked ideas.