[selcuka]

That might indicate a good place to work for a software engineer, but not necessarily a profitable business. If a bug affects 1% of your customers but a feature will potentially bring 2% more customers, the business will obviously prioritise the latter.

Disclaimer: I know that the above is an oversimplification but the point is there has to be a balance between fixing bugs and adding features. You can't wait until all reported bugs have been fixed.

[gommm]

I think that's often the reasoning behind this but I think the oversimplification doesn't help. It's usually harder to attract new customers than to retain them so retention is important and regression bugs affect that. They slowly erode the confidence until the customers who were your major advocates now become strong critics wherever they go.

[selcuka]

> I think the oversimplification doesn't help

True

> It's usually harder to attract new customers

To my defense that difficulty was factored in the 2% figure.

[gommm]

oh yes, I didn't mean to harp on you, what I meant is that I believe a lot of executives make the same calculation, oversimplifying things in the same way which leads to the repeated QA issues both Apple and Microsoft have or to the issues that Jetbrains has. New features are exciting and are seen as ways to get new customers.

Stability and bug fixes is not sexy and I believe underestimated as a way to retain customers but it's critical to customer happiness.