Re: the hype .. what I would say is, as an employee of a FAANG, is that I work with really smart people. Some of the smartest and most competent people I've ever worked with. Most much smarter than myself.
But after 9 years, I'm not convinced that their intelligence always yields results that exceed that of other companies I've worked at. In some ways, yes, but in other ways no. So, I dunno.
Having clearly articulated processes certainly help consistency.
Even if you are doing the wrong thing consistently, one has a much greater chance of knowing what parameters can be tweaked to alter the outcome.
Consistency is easier to monitor/log.
It is easier to experiment.
Without consistency, it is much more difficult to know which of your decisions changed the outcome, or was it just good or bad luck.
Toyota and McDonald’s are successfully companies, but they are not perfect.
Kaizen and consistency are not mutually exclusive.
But in my experience striving for consistency means that before improving something you have to go and change everywhere that pattern appears in 400 different code bases going back 20 years (and all of the documentation across however many platforms). As a result nobody ever improves things.
As with all things YMMV.
Frankly, I don't get the hype. I've interviewed FAANG engineers and have given a thumbs down almost as often as I did for engineers from other companies.