Where they have external paying users, they still operate the software for them (i.e. provide it as a service), so they have access to all what these customers are doing.

It's not a lame excuse, unfortunately, there is a very real barrier of trust when you talk to a coworker (even from another group) and when you talk to a customer. At the very least, you can agree on a common schedule.

IMHO it's not a coincidence that the blog listed those companies as more "nimble".

He also hints that his customers might have more power to push back on changes. That's certainly the case for smaller software houses that sell to big enterprise customers.

Facebook, Google, etc, are somewhat beholden to end users, but not in a way that impedes them from rolling out what they want, when they want to.

Good point. The worst-performing companies I've worked for had one thing in common: they were small and unable or unwilling to push back on toxic customers.

Pushing back doesn't always work. A good example...support for IE6, way past the time when that was a good idea.

Your contact at "big mega corp" that pays for your software may have no ability to change their internal policy that they've stuck with IE6 for years after it was sunset. So, if you want the sale or renewal, you have to support it.

Knowing your customer lets you take shortcuts. For example, if you have a monorepo, you can do a code search to find all usages of a function and fix them, instead of going through a formal deprecation process.

There is a tension here between efficiency and privacy. Inside a corporation with an "open" culture, you can be a lot more transparent and efficient since you don't have the same privacy issues.

Open source projects can sometimes do similar things, for example with the Linux policy of having device drivers in-tree.

I think with customers he meant mainly customers who customize and extend the software. Especially if you publish an API and customers can run the software on their own servers you are kind of stuck because you don't know what is being used and how. With cloud based stuff it's a little easier because you can track what people are doing.

Also, Facebook has a history of breaking things for 3rd developers. You can't really do this with enterprise customers who pay a lot of money for your stuff.