Thanks for the comment, David!

Google does have a ton of analytics, but they're mostly outwards-focused (so analytics to keep track of people who use Google products). The stuff I owned was internal (so the users were other Google engineers), and that is an entirely different world. Some have analytics, some don't, and very few if any actually have user journey analytics.

Your question about how a Staff+ decides where to spend their time is a very interesting one! I'm adding it to my list of things to write about some day :)

For this specific case, here's why I jumped on this

(1) I had a gut feeling that it was a big problem where google was wasting millions but nobody else could see that it was a big problem

(2) it was ambiguous so I think most people who thought about it just didn't know where to start

(3) it required coordination across ten or fifteen different teams

(4) if I proved that it was a big problem, it was going to drive prioritization of where my entire org invested its time

I think those elements made this specific example a good place to me to spend the time. Generally speaking I expect Staff+ to see problems that others don't, to not be discouraged by ambiguity and to coordinate efforts across team boundaries.

I hope this helps!