I think "unique among big tech companies" and "used to be the norm" can both be true! It definitely has pros and cons though: I've worked on a handful of teams

I think "unique among big tech companies" and "used to be the norm" can both be true! It definitely has pros and cons though: I've worked on a handful of teams at Apple and was very lucky to have been able to work on super fun and interesting stuff on all of them, but an outsider confronted with 1000+ vague listings on jobs.apple.com is effectively playing the lottery of whether they'll get to interview for a team that's a good match for them.