Turns out there was a known bug in Microsoft schannel that had yet to be patched and they'd wasted weeks of our effort by not searching their own bug tracker properly.
I switched from IntelliJ to emacs for this reason and it’s been great
Then you assume, naively, that this means that they've recognised that there really is a product problem and will go off and fix it. However, then in turn the support tech needs to reproduce the the issue to the development team.
They invariably fail to do so for any number of reasons, such as: This only happens in my region, not others. Or the support tech's lab environment doesn't actually allow them to spin up the high-spec thing that's broken. Or whatever.
Then the ticket gets rejected with "can't reproduce" after you've reproduced the issue, with a recorded video and everything as evidence.
If you then navigate that gauntlet, the ticket is most typically rejected with "It is broken like that by design, closed."
But back in the 80s and 90s, margins were significantly higher. If you look at hardware, I recall selling hardware with 30% margin, if not more... even 80% on some items.
Yet what came with that was support, support, support. And when you sell 5 computers a month, instead of 500, well.. you need that margin to even have a store. Which you need, because no wide-scale internet.
On the software side, it was sort of the same. I remember paying $80 for some pieces of software, which would be like $200 today. You'd pay $1 on an app store for such software, but I'd also call the author if there was a bug. He'd send an update in the mail.
I guess my point is, in those days, it was fun to fix issues. The focus was more specific, there was time to ply the trade, to enjoy it, to have performant, elegant fixes.
Now, it's all "my boss is hassling me and another bug will somehow mean I have to work harder", which is .. well, sad.
Even when you're paying millions to AWS you have to get through their first line of support and they will ask silly questions until you can convince them to escalate.
This is simply a bug, it's an implementation mistake, it's even possible to imagine from what we do know about the implementation inside Windows to imagine how you'd likely write that bug, simply you're writing the "lock stealing" code and you realise you need some context -- are we stealing the write lock or the read lock? You realise that context won't fit in your tiny flag budget (flag bits are hidden in the bottom of a pointer) and you forget that you actually know this context at the exact moment you need it - you were asked for either a write lock or a read lock, that's what you're stealing. So, you write code which does what it can without the context, always steal the write lock. Oops. Bug.
And yet several people insist that this wasn't a bug it's actually the proper way for this to function. Not only in this github ticket, and in the Microsoft internal bug, but I saw several third parties defend the bug as obviously the correct way for this to work.
Fortunately it seems STL understood that and the internal ticket was eventually fixed and (presumably) in Windows 11 today this bug is fixed.
When I developed software I would jump right on top of any bug reports immediately, and work until they were fixed. I was grateful to my customers for bringing them to my attention.
I agree regarding the need to triage at scale, unfortunately most large companies I've encountered fail to do this well and seem ill-equipped to accept high quality bug reports of edge case defects generated by expert users (save for the odd exception that arrives by social media from someone who happens to have enough followers to get their attention outside the regular support pipeline).
In my experience this doesn't usually boil down to a systems issue (the ticketing systems etc. exist that should theoretically allow for eventual escalation to the right engineer/developer) but a corporate culture thing (the company just doesn't prioritize customer feedback especially at the level where staff who actually deal with customers interface with the teams that write/maintain the software). Often it's genuinely valued at the C-level (the Bezos story of calling Amazon"s tech support line during an exec meeting is a fun example) but diluted somewhere between them and the rank-and-file.
(Ps. I'm not arguing with you and appreciate you took the time to craft a thoughtful reply)
If their week is already booked full just trying to keep up with the roadmap deadlines, a bug ticket feels like being tossed a 25lb weight when you're drowning.
You could say: "but have pride in your work!"
But if your company only values shipping, not fixing, that attitude doesn't make it through the first performance review.
My preference is to treat the defects like feature work, size and plan. Yes you might not get all the feature work done but the team is accountable for everything they make