I acknowledge that as a perfectly fair point, which perhaps underscores how unreliable communication is in transmitting intent and tone! For what it’s worth, I acknowledge that my interpretation could be at fault, and “proving it” is probably going to be a fool’s errand - we interpret things as we interpret them, and there is probably more unreliable emotional alchemy that goes into that process than science.
If I had to try to pinpoint the problem, I’d say that - to some degree at least - we are not our emotional condition. Thus, if I say to someone that “I am angry at you and that’s your fault”, then in the ways such an accusation is codified, it can be hard to work out that perhaps the best response is that I need to achieve better control of my anger.
Of course, some anger is justified, and sometimes complaints are too. However, one solution for a complainant is to work out what can be said to achieve the desired end goal. For example, in this case, something like “Would a detailed use-case doc help CircleCI determine if this would be a popular feature?” That would be more likely to elicit employee replies. Perhaps a private email would be better too, with stuff like “I know you guys have a lot of competing demands, but I think this feature would not be too hard to achieve, if it was done in way X”.
Finally (and apols for the broad off-topic!), I think the theme of how we communicate with each other is very interesting in the context of (future) commercial relationships. The economic system we work within is broadly coercive: if I pay money or offer to, I might reserve the right to take a strident/brusque/abusive tone with the folks I am paying. That’s a very strange power we have inadvertently given to money, and we often do that subconsciously. And even though I am of these opinions, I still have to stop myself from doing it, because it is quite normalised (within Western societies at least).