That depends on the last time you tried ranking a site. I've seen it progressively get slower over the last couple years. But when you see the changes happen slow it doesn't seem that extreme as you're always slowly adapting.
What I do now is age sites. But I can do that cause I don't work for clients B2B I broker for commissions.
If I have a niche on my radar .... like I have a couple right now I'm aiming for next summer. So I already registered 2 sites and threw up content just to let them sit and do nothing.
I'll keep working on my 4 primary money sites. Then around January, Feb I'll start a weak SEO campaign. Doing mainly directories, web2.0, targeted blogs and a shitload of targeted YT videos. Just to get traffic coming to the site. Then March I'll begin real SEO and bust out my PBN links. I'll aim to rank by May which is when those industries start to peak.
It was fun back in 2013 when you could rank ANY local niche #1 in less than 6 weeks. And these were competitive top 300 adwords terms.
In a way I do miss those days. But what I don't miss is hitting #1, then 2 weeks later guy who wasn't even on page 1 pushes me down to position 2.
So I don't even know if it's a bad thing. It's like the difference between speed chess and normal chess. A few "benefits" I notice is that my overall style has become more whitehat. Yeh I use PBNs but I no longer buy PBN links. Back in the day that's all I did and it was too easy. I had 1 guy I used, he ranked every fucking site I gave him #1 lightening fast. These days I own 100% of my own network. I put an absurd amount of time into legitimizing the sites.
So when I hit #1 now.... it feels great. I don't have the stress of some random fucker creeping out of nowhere. I can peep competitors. If I see a site moving up page 2 fast I know I still have a good amount of time (at least 1-2 months) to respond and hold court.
The only thing I don't like is my suspicion that Google may slow this shit down more. Maybe by 2018 they just refuse to rank any young sites (under a year old) on page 1. That would drive me crazy but Google does love driving people crazy.
Also, let me clarify something. It's not that rankings take "much longer" but that they take longer on young sites. I grabbed a 3+ year old domain a few months ago, hit it with a PBN links and the response was unbelievably fast. It jumped from the top of page 3 to page 2 to bottom of page 1 in 10 days. This was a competitive ass term. Slowed down a bit after position 4 but aged domains do still rank really fast. It's really the young ones that aren't doing well. So people throw them into overdrive. When I was doing that shit my ranks would just lock up. Then I'd slow down my pace and the sites would start ranking again. That's why I really think for most local niches you shouldn't be doing much more than 2-4 power links / month. Even competitive niches don't need much more than that.
The problem is clients don't wanna hear that shit. Which again is why I don't sell SEO. If I sold SEO I'd tell business owners, "it costs $500 to get on my waiting list which is 6 months". Then, "if you use any SEO during this time you forfeit the deposit, I will keep your money and refuse service". They'd pay me just to learn some fucking patience. After 6 months I'd start SEO.
As dumb / impractical as that sounds and is.... this game is won by turtles not rabbits. Which is why turtles live 80 years and rabbits are lucky if they live 8.