Azure DevOps isn't the cause of the queue time problem. It can run bare metal. The Mac hardware that we run attaches and starts super quickly, for instance. We want clean machines on every job (for compliance and robustness), so we're spinning new VMs on Windows/Linux jobs.

We could have hot machines ready to go at all times and eliminate any queue time. There's also machine-learning based model for predictive spin-up. The downside is primarily cost to maintain all the various SKUs needed in a live and ready state. We compromise a bit there.