On any Go production projects I worked on or near, the incremental compile time was slower than C++ and Rust.

A full build was definitely much faster, but not as useful. Especially when using a build system with shared networked caching (Bazel for example).

Yes those projects were a bloated mess, as it always seems to be.

Re: slower incremental compile times - not my experience, but interesting data point. I'll keep a look out for this.