Why Companies Don't Fix Bugs

A lot of the time, a lack of bugfixes comes from the incentive structure management has created. Specifically, you rarely get rewarded for fixing things. You get rewarded for shipping new things. In effect, you're punished for fixing things because that's time you're not shipping new things.

Ownership is another one. For example, product teams who are responsible for shipping new things but support for existing things get increasingly pushed onto support teams. This is really a consequence of the same incentive structure.

This is partially why I don't think that all subscription software is bad. The Adobe end of the spectrum is bad. The Jetbrains end is good. There is value in creating good, reliable software. If your only source of revenue is new sales then bugs are even less of a priority until it's so bad it makes your software virtually unusuable. And usually it took a long while to get there with many ignored warnings.

Jetbrains still likes to gaslight you and say you are wrong about bugs or features.

Recent example the removal of the commit modal.

The whole New UI debacle really set the tone and expectations and I don't see them changing. They seem like a different company these days? Maybe I didn't really notice in the past.