The features may have limited scope but if they have an entire team dedicated to them they usually deal with large enough scale that it's worth it.
When you're dealing with distributed systems at large scale you can no longer have services be down for longer periods of time because it's a lot of money you're losing.
The business decision for employing an engineer or engineering team should be made at the margin -- that is, if the marginal revenue increase is higher than the cost of employing that team you should definitely employ them.
At large scale, a sub 1% increase in revenue or decrease in revenue lost can be multiple $M, so it would be worth having a team that only increases productivity across the company by an average of <1%.
When you're dealing with distributed systems at large scale you can no longer have services be down for longer periods of time because it's a lot of money you're losing.
The business decision for employing an engineer or engineering team should be made at the margin -- that is, if the marginal revenue increase is higher than the cost of employing that team you should definitely employ them.
At large scale, a sub 1% increase in revenue or decrease in revenue lost can be multiple $M, so it would be worth having a team that only increases productivity across the company by an average of <1%.