My point stands, particularly w.r.t. individual software engineers. Do you think any of the companies you mentioned had one, or even two/three engineers build t

My point stands, particularly w.r.t. individual software engineers. Do you think any of the companies you mentioned had one, or even two/three engineers build the complicated marvels you are talking about? Do you think they would incur the risk of that as public companies? I am willing to bet the answer is 'no', particularly in this day and age. The point of the original question isn't whether products as a whole are complex and hard, it's whether an individual engineer will get to do fairly large, complex systems.