Question Managing projects with thousands of assets in it

Me and my team need some guidance. We've worked with many projects big and small but since 2019+, one thing became a very big obstruction for us; "Hold on...".

I just pressed "ctrl+s" in a scene to see this:



Other examples from my own workflow; I waited for 6 minutes for just trying to clone a post processing profile file. Whenever I try to save a prefab, it's about 20 seconds. I alt+tab and come back, about 10-15 seconds total freeze. Touch the scene to see around, another "hold on...". Project opening, waits around 20 mins, collab checking for changes, waits around 8-10 mins. Press play, wait around 4-5mins. It's just very, very, very counter-productive. I'm not even mentioning crashes and re-openings. Script compilation is also around 4-5 mins (I know this can be reduced by using firstpass Assembly but that's not the point)

The project is on an nvme ssd and unity is installed in a regular ssd. Main project folder is excluded from virus scans in Windows Security. Got 32gb 3200 RAM, RTX2070 8gb, i7 7700k with 4.2ghz. Should be way more than enough in short.

I just don't get it. If a project goes beyond 7-8gb of assets folder, editor starts to go crazy.

How do you guys work with this? What workarounds you use? How do you stay productive while nearly half of your work time goes to waiting for editor to respond? Any hacks I can use to speed things up for example? I remember times when pressing play took longer than actually building and playing the game. Any ideas?