Thanks for this Cory. Really hits home, even for a failed programmer-wannabe like myself. People seem to want to believe that end users are the customers, because the customer is always right, so says the conventional wisdom. What most people fail to realize is that we stopped being customers when SV started giving stuff away for free use. At that point we became guinea pigs for a mass psychology experiment designed to study how people can be controlled and manipulated, usually into serving whatever feudal tech lord crossed the finish line first, but not necessarily with the best stuff. The real customers are the firms most interested in maximizing their bottom line though ad revenue and in-app purchasing, like how it was when Farmville was a thing. I'll never forgive myself for spending real world $$$ on that crap, even if it was only $20.