When it gets that cold salt is useless, so thankfully we see much less of it throughout the winter. Sand is used instead. -20C and salt sort of stops working.

I don’t understand what you mean by endlessly tweak and customize and modify. None of that is necessary by any means, which makes me question your whole preamble there.

In Canada at a telco, but engineers are out of scope like management while everyone else in the company is part of the same union.