Don't forget the multiplier on how many more internal systems a company has vs its external ones. It's not uncommon at all to see thousands of engineers at a large company working on internal-only systems, covering the full gamut of every need of a large corporation. Hell, even just the facilities management systems for the office spaces are complicated.

I read somewhere (can't remember where) that Airbnb had a dedicated team of 13 engineers and designers working on the welcome email alone. Getting the CTA "just right" resulted in a huge difference in conversions.

And the nice thing is that’s all public.

So if you’re designing your own CTA, just copy Wal-Mart’s or Amazon’s or Airbnb’s and voila.

In a way, I wish I got to work at Wal-Mart or McDonalds just to get a 1st-Hand view of their processes. Would beat any “LEAN” course.

That's a great point I always struggle with coming up with UIs for side projects, but really everything I come up with will always look cheap compared to the efforts of 13 experts.

I mean you could go work for them? McDonalds is highly optimized fast food but they have a quality issue. Breakfast and chicken nuggets are about the only thing they do well. Walmart is getting better with e-commerce and online groceries. I think that’s the future. If in were Bezos, I’d be worried about Walmart. Target needs to step up their game too especially around grocery delivery and pickup.

If I had a week to think how to design a good button, I would design a good button.

Oh if only it were that simple :) I don't think Airbnb's CTA will work for anyone but Airbnb.

The question is could they have achieved the same with two people.

When I was contracting I was always surprised how outwardly similar businesses could have vastly different IT functions. Sometimes an order of magnitude larger for no apparent gain.