I suspect massive companies like late stage GOOG and AMZN will always be dominated by an oppressive machine in the rank and file. It seems inevitable at this scale.

But the wonderful thing about these places is they can create/acquire/prop-up small subsidiaries. If they're self-aware enough to know the oppressive force at their size, they leave these offshoots alone (until too big, where the cycle repeats anyways). These are the parts where you can still experience the magic being discussed.

Presumably working at X Development (formerly Google X) still has a lot of this energy and autonomy.