Ironically, as I’ve become more senior (11+ years at a faang company) I’ve had to do less and less of that “look around and understand everything” work because of time pressure. But I rely on my experience to be more confident that I can ignore the details and focus on the reason I’m in this file.
Well, that, and if it gets too messy I give up and call in a junior engineer…
These layoffs didn’t happen because Google is out of money. It’s insanely profitable.