Feedback Should Be Earned

Here it is. Someone has put their finger on the “you’re holding it wrong” vibe and aren’t letting go.

So let’s hear it from David Goldfarb, creative director of The Outsiders.

“If people play a game for hundreds of hours they shouldn’t even be able to leave a fucking negative review”

It’s a familiar frustration. If you weren’t aware The Outsiders is a video game, but this frustration isn’t just about games. It’s everywhere and everything now. Welcome to 2025.

Software Frustrations

You use many software tools daily. Sure, one of those might be Xcode but let’s just think of software that’s even trying.

Think about your cloud IDE, your JIRA backlog or that comedy bank app that logs you out every five minutes.

If you’ve been voluntarily using a piece of software for over 6 months there is a clear argument that your feedback might need a little more context than a 2* rant.

While negative reviews can be valid, using software for an extended period of time and then dunking on it because they changed the position of a button? That’s performative rage.

Preventing Constructive Feedback

Tech firms obsess over feedback loops, and gathering data. The thing is, oftentimes users don’t have any skin in the game. They’re flooding bug trackers with “this app is garbage” even though they’ve built a business on your back. You start to wonder if building anything is worth the effort.

Constructive feedback (commenters, take note) isn’t this is trash. It simply isn’t.

The 300 Hour Rule

Maybe there should be a time threshold that defines the weight that feedback should be given.

Let’s apply this logic to your average enterprise product:

• If you’ve used the same SaaS product every working day for two years… your feedback better be more thoughtful than a thumbs-down emoji on Slack.

• If your company has built automation around a platform, then yes, maybe you don’t get to slam it in your exit interview just because of one Friday outage.

• If you’re a developer who’s spent a year working with a buggy CI system but refused to write a single improvement ticket, no, your “hot take” at retrospective isn’t brave. It’s just lazy.

Criticism Should Be Earned

This isn’t about muzzling users. It’s about recognising that once software becomes part of your workflow something vital changes. When something becomes part of your life something moves even further forwards. You don’t have to say thank you.

When a user review system gives the same weight to “crashed once” and “been my daily driver for three years but UI changed and now I’m mad”, we are not measuring feedback. We’re into the dark world of measuring feelings, which might well be valid but are also an awful QA metric.

Everyone’s a Critic. Few Are Builders

Building software is hard. Really hard. But the harder part? Keeping it running when everyone thinks they’re an unpaid product manager.

The modern user has expectations set by trillion-dollar companies with patience set by a TikTok addiction. If a game developer gets 500 hours of engagement and still ends up with a 1-star review, imagine the kind of support ticket your enterprise SaaS tool gets after a week of downtime caused by another team’s undocumented schema change.

You get the idea.

Let’s not be like that.

About The Author

Professional Software Developer “The Secret Developer” can be found on Twitter @TheSDeveloper.

The Secret Developer doesn’t really use software that much. Except the work things, but that’s obvious isn’t it?