They're not wrong though; if you want to introduce a new tool - especially one as large and complicated as Bazel - you need to also take ownership of training and hiring not just yourself (assuming you're not already a Bazel expert) but all your current and future colleagues yourself. The management has to make a cost / benefit analysis and it's not in Bazel's favor.

Bazel is a tool by and for Google scale companies, which 99% of tech companies aren't. Make and co are good enough for most use cases.