I wrote a post about that here: https://rosszurowski.com/log/2022/makefiles
No, its not, and Just supports Windows, where that is particularly true.
I get the reverence around make but don't blind yourself to potentially better ways of doing things.
I would even go so far as to say that intentionally avoiding new ways to approach these things will necessarily blind you to better ways once they do come along, and I wonder how many good tools have died because "[x] does all I need." (replace "x" with whatever you like.)
The simple fact that a build target isn't executed if the build file already exists, requiring a workaround to run it, points to the difference in purpose and philosophy. Those little details, together with the more modern design, accumulate to make Just a tool that is simpler to use for that purpose.
When something doesn't work as expected, I dive in as deep as the rabbit hole goes to get across the line.
Curious what led you to arrive at "Aha! They must be an ops person", will you humor me with an explanation?
It is possible to reimplement a relatively easy tool like make, and having learnt from its historical shortcomings it can be better irrespective of the implementation language. But that’s a different point.