A submission is about Google product X has bug Y. Instead of a technical discussion on how bug Y could have happened or it could have been prevented, I noticed that a lot of comments would revolve around how bug Y doesn't affect product X badly enough and how product X doesn't contribute directly to Google's ads revenue, so Google has no incentive to fix it and therefore Google doesn't care about bug Y.
Or maybe Apple product Z has bug W. Then there would be discussions on how product Z doesn't contribute to iPhone sales or even when it does bug W is not serious enough to reduce iPhone sales, ergo Apple doesn't care about fixing bug W.
This type of reasoning is very reductive, and while not wrong per se, does not seem to be very interesting. You can categorically say the same thing about everything Google or Apple does. Same for other companies. I don't mind being reminded of a company's main revenue stream but I thought I've seen too many of those lately and they are getting a bit repetitive. When a submitter submits bug Y and bug W, presumably they want a discussion on the specifics of those bugs, rather than a generic assertion on how Google or Apple doesn't care and HN can feel good vilifying those companies.
Am I speaking for the community here? Do you also echo this sentiment?
Students are a "one man business" in this respect. Complete autonomy. Completely independent success or fail. It's perhaps not surprising that this is the defacto world-view of most junior staff.
In large organisations though, there's a lot more complexity. Actions have consequences, sometimes large consequences, and so you need to tread slowly and carefully. Most people don't have a big picture view, so, well, management.
So, to your point, it's always good to squash bugs. But large organisations have to balance time squashing bugs, with time updating to a new compiler, with time to implement that new report Sales is waiting for to land a big new customer.
In other words, there are competing interests and someone else decides what you work on today. That might be done really weird bug report. It might be some seemingly meaningless new feature. It might be to leave a bug in, because fixing it will have other negative implications.
All this is prep to answer your question. As the Hacker News community ages, it becomes somewhat less interesting to discuss how a bug happened, or how to fix it, because that is just speculation with little to no useful information either way.
Whereas viewing it from a "managers eyes" let's you start seeing it as part of a bigger picture. Why is it there? Why might fixing it be a low priority? (or more accurately, why is doing done thing else a higher priority?)