When I joined the same guy had been president of the club for years. And it wasn't until after I went to college that he retired, mostly from the grumbling. The fall event was run by a local business but manned by us and workers from another local business (the owner of the latter is now the mayor). And of course without the excellent town and county infrastructure services, few would have come that far.
It wasn't until I grew up and moved away and joined other clubs that I realized how much hard and smart work these people were doing, and how tremendously hard it is to replicate.
When an event almost goes right, it's easy to forget that because you only see the thing that went wrong.
I camp with a lot of volunteers, former employees, and people in charge of setting up BM's telecom, power grid, and organizing some of the other invisible infrastructure. Their work is done before the gates are open to genpop. The horror stories I hear from them every year range from missed payments for equipment and well past due invoices for infrastructure services to miscommunication among the staff that makes it hard for specialized volunteers to do their work (like setup telecom, organize logistics) to the occasional temper tantrum by leadership. Look no further than the utter hell they go through nearly every year negotiating with the BLM and LEOs, entirely of their own doing because they butt heads with the other negotiators. Pro tip: don't antagonize your only two vendors for land and security because your attendees suffer the consequences through harassment and higher ticket prices!
More importantly, infrastructure has not gotten that much better over the years despite the sky rocketing ticket prices and attendance. It wasn't until a few years ago, too, that someone with actual experience in logistics and infrastructure was finally put in charge of the work.
Also, DPW handbook not for public release? It's right there on the BM website accessible through a Google search [2].
[1] When did portapotties get shade? They should have had them since the 1990s and I don't remember any in 2014.
The borg is operating in their best interests, but the departments that make burning man happen work really hard to always improve year after year. So when that crusty DPW person flips you off, try saying, "thank you for your work".