This post has been super informative and elucidating in terms of how the team is doing, what issues/challenges you guys are identifying, how you assess not just your own work but the context you're operating within. Thank you for this.

One thing that is not very clear to me is why there isn't much more bugfixing and development of features done by other developers (outside of Steemit, Inc.). I see that you have identified that:

We often get bogged down due to limited resources. Engineers are finding themselves too frequently called away from important projects to address relatively minor issues.

Are there things you think can be done to help with this? One potential strategy might be to announce (with the help of Utopian or directly through @steemitblog) that there is this opportunity for help with developing certain features or fixing certain bugs. Or improving the reliability of certain systems that often cause problems.

Taking it further, could some of the work for Communities be announced as open to developers/designers to do it as per the provided specs?