[justinlink]

As a developer on a very small team for many years now for a B2B product, I've spent years now filling feature requests, adding new features, and enhancing the product. The users seem to be getting more demanding and less thankful/polite.

One of my least favorite days are when we announce new features. Nobody takes a minute to say thank you, instead they want to submit new requests or demand updates on something previously submitted.

I also think, users do not understand the complexities involved. They see software every where that does so much these days for little to no cost and they just demand and think it can be done in a minute.

Sure we get paid well, and it's not a physically demanding field. But it is a mentally demanding job. We are often under appreciated. And then the users blame you for everything. It just gets to you after a while and becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of the angry old developer.

I love my job, I love making software that solves real world problems. I just don't appreciate users telling me how my life's work is worthless because it doesn't have this one feature only that person seems to need and I should be able to add it in a minute if I was good at my job.

Sorry for the rant.

[jjeaff]

Let's not forget those users that can't live without feature X and then after you build it, never use it, or end up leaving anyway.

[ThalesX]

This was amazing to see during my work with a startup.

The CEO would take any feedback and try to integrate it into the platform while also refusing to actually talk to our users because "big data knows better" (we had a small database...). It was also fun how they ignored any feedback from the in-house people actually using the product day to day because "they're just low level, they don't understand", and I can vouch that their understanding seemed proper.

The COO would just browse the internet for cool articles and find features of other platforms and just cram them up into the backlog. You'd see him go to the toilet, come back in 30 minutes and fill up 5 - 6 backlog items, like 'conferencing system like Twilio'. This was also done while ignoring his day to day tasks.

It was rather hilarious at times, all that needed to happen is for some feedback to come through some channel and the CEO would instantly get everyone focused on new issues, even if the feedback was minor our out of touch with our actual product.

It feels in hindsight that they used features to pile on top of a bad understanding of the market and total lack of vision.

[PicassoCTs]

I think the users- while empowered, feel the gap of their own lack of power in the knowledge world very cleary, on a sub-concious level. They are dependent on devices, they do not understand, can not repair or change, so the hostility from both sides is part of a steep, invisible power-asymmetry, that previously has turned on other users and ate their lunch.