This has been my experience as well. Google seems torn between multiple principles:
1. Like Google Search, you shouldn't try to organize your files, you should just let search do all the heavy lifting.
2. You should definitely organize things yourself, but search is a nice backup if you make a mistake -- anyone here create a document in Drive and have no idea what folder it *actually* ended up in?
3. Search? That's another team.
It’s shockingly bad given that Google literally is a SEARCH company.