I have been with my company now for 13 years. Back then we had plenty of slack time which we used to try stuff. We introduced git, spent months on figuring out if UI automation works, invented a distributed test runner, spent weeks on building shielding enclosures so our tests that use RF communication won't fail in the crowded test lab. All of these resulted in huge leaps forward and improved productivity enormously.

Since then devs got squeezed more and more so that nobody has any time for trying out stuff. Tech debt accumulates and nothing improves. When you have an idea, you have to submit a proposal to a review board which approves requests from politically connected people and rejects other requests because other deadlines.

This development has taken out everything that made me enjoy about the job and I am good at. Thankfully I am reaching retirement so I am happy to leave.

What you wrote sounds like a good description of processes at my previous job, which I left after 7y. At the beginning I saw a problem, I solved it, got my hands in everything that needed a solution. I basically built the whole initial platform.

Later it was just all scrum wannabe agile and task after task, while experimentation was phased out and engineers were even forbidden to explore other topics than the team lead wanted, because according to him those topics were not close enough to the job. Guess what, all good engineers left. Now that team lead left as well, and if they didn't learn anything from that experience, I am sure they will wreak havoc somewhere else.