The company i work for is not big or consumer-facing, so this is not an answer to your question.
But we do have a dynamic that i find interesting. The company is organised into many small business units - some very small, fewer than ten people. Each is accountable for its own profit and loss. They hire their own programmers to build the actual line-of-business software they need. But there are also internal tools and systems, shared across units or used by their developers, that are built by programmers hired directly by the top level of the company - their reporting line goes straight up to the CIO and CEO, rather than to a business unit manager. So, in a way, our company does the exact opposite of deprioritizing internal tools and systems! The programmers who develop the internal tools and systems are the elite!
But we do have a dynamic that i find interesting. The company is organised into many small business units - some very small, fewer than ten people. Each is accountable for its own profit and loss. They hire their own programmers to build the actual line-of-business software they need. But there are also internal tools and systems, shared across units or used by their developers, that are built by programmers hired directly by the top level of the company - their reporting line goes straight up to the CIO and CEO, rather than to a business unit manager. So, in a way, our company does the exact opposite of deprioritizing internal tools and systems! The programmers who develop the internal tools and systems are the elite!