I think that devs often underestimate just how difficult it is for users to report problems. The most common problems are that the users feel ignored, like they're being a burden on the devs, or scolded (for not reporting it correctly, for "not holding it right", etc.). It's even common for there not to be an easy way to report such problems ("use Discord", "sign up for an account on this website and report there", etc.)
Even as a dev, I resist doing it because of how unpleasant it can be. If I can come up with a workaround without having to report the issue, that's what I'll tend to do. And if I have to talk to tech support rather than the devs? That's simply not going to happen unless I'm trapped into using the product.
We still haven't cracked this problem as an industry.
To make things worse the largest consumer tech companies, like Google and Apple, have a well deserved reputation for caring very little about customer feedback. It's a normal thing to lookup how to fix an annoyance or regression, finding hundreds of people posting about the same complaint, without ever getting any sort of response or reaction from the company.
Heck the only support Google offers for many products is a community forum that their own employees never post on, and I assume few even look at. People have largely been conditioned to think that tech companies don't care about their feedback.
This is a Support task, not a Dev task. Support should be working the tickets and reporting unsolvable issues with the code, so the Devs can address.
You've been dealing with bad support teams, because your experience is not how support is supposed to work.
Also, we Ops folks truly appreciate undocumented work arounds by the Devs. We love spending hours pouring over a given system, trying 107 different versions of some framework, causing lots of downtime, and working nights/weekends, just to learn that some UNDOCUMENTED cludge fucking bullshit is what's actually causing the issue.
Do better man. You're shitting on more than just the users.
With open source, you're usually reporting to devs. With commercial software, usually to tech support or to nobody.
> You've been dealing with bad support teams, because your experience is not how support is supposed to work.
Yes, I know -- but it is how the majority of support actually is, if there is even support available at all. In a whole lot of cases, there is none.
I'm talking about software meant for consumer use. Software for business use is much better on these issues, although you still do find them. At my workplace, we recently took a large financial hit (and almost lost an important customer) because of bad and unresponsive tech support from a supplier. It happens.
Even as a dev, I resist doing it because of how unpleasant it can be. If I can come up with a workaround without having to report the issue, that's what I'll tend to do. And if I have to talk to tech support rather than the devs? That's simply not going to happen unless I'm trapped into using the product.
We still haven't cracked this problem as an industry.