It's kind of true for all big companies. Sure, launch some little things and pretend to innovate, but the real job is to keep greasing the wheels of the cash cows. Like Meta loves to talk big about AI and VR and blockchain, but at least when I interviewed there, everyone I spoke to was from commerce or ads.

It's true. Most of the "innovators" are either high up in the company, quit for greener pastures, or sit around waiting for their stocks to vest. Current employees have one job: maintenance.

I worked there for a long time. It’s 100% true. They mostly need low level workers to keep the systems going.

The way budgeting works at Amazon, every team contributes items to lines in a spreadsheet. Those get rolled up at every level all the way to the CEO, who then approves or denies, and then it all rolls back down.

There is a special section called KTLO (keep the lights on). That one usually gets priority (because it's pro-customer, since customers want the existing stuff to keep working).

I've seen departmental budgets that dedicate 75% of their headcount to KTLO.