Let me try and explain things a little better as perhaps some of my personal disappointments in these past few years tend to impact upon my posts (once you've been hounded like I have been you might also become a little bitter).

Typically software developers that work for commercial software companies (and I was such a developer for many years) are kept insulated from the financial side of said companies and even generally from the clients (I rarely ever took a support call in over 15 years of such professional work and didn't even have much email correspondence with any "end users").

As the average software developer is more of an introvert they tend to work best kept in small teams with others similar to themselves (and this is the environment they mostly prefer to be working in and the model that most successful software development companies use).

The open source movement has a bit of a different dynamic but it isn't even nearly as confused with funding dynamics as projects in this particular field have become (where investment/crowdfunding/ICO's and developers/salespeople/scammers have all become a bit of a blur).

Basically this has resulted in (genuine) developers being forced into an uncomfortable (for them) "spotlight" that includes direct contact with people who often don't even understand software development at all (but are always happy to criticise).

I used to think that the idea of having less layers was a good thing but when it comes to software development itself now I am not so sure at all (as the team of relatively unknown devs that are well looked after and insulated from the outside works better IMO).

So for a way "forward" I would suggest that devs should be managed by a development management team (maybe just one or two people can do that) whose job it is to keep the devs insulated from the outside (so they can do productive development work without the unwanted attention and pressure).