This only somewhat matches my experience as a SWE at Google. (Though I can see how things may well look different from SRE!) In my view, there was both too muc

This only somewhat matches my experience as a SWE at Google. (Though I can see how things may well look different from SRE!) In my view, there was both too much time spent doing big designs with many of the details eventually becoming stale during implementation, when the real goal was to lock down some key decision points, and also a lot of iterative design and execution actually happening, with less fanfare. Another thing I saw is that there are many different kinds of projects at big companies, which sit at different points on the continuum between detailed up front design being necessary and useful vs unnecessary friction. I guess it's a YMMV situation!