Probably not. 15 years is not that long, what do I know, I’m just on senior expert level.

Longevity is not a guarantee of broad exposure. It may mean you have deep exposure, but making the rounds around the industry I can't imagine maintaining such a universally optimistic picture of commercial management of software development.

Companies run skeleton crews on crap products that don’t make money.

Companies run skeleton crews on products when they think they can get away with it. Very high profile commercial projects with a lot of analyst attention may not be able to get away with it, but some surprisingly high profile projects without quite as much scrutiny get away with more than you would guess.

This is where your lack of knowledge about products like that shines through.

I'm speaking from familiarity with the provider side of things, wondering when a customer will catch on that they can't seem to get that awesome support unless it's the same guy as their peers get, and suspiciously unable to get decent support for a random week in June or something.

From what you are writing you aren’t a programmer and you haven’t worked in a software corporation before

Incorrect assumption on both counts. A few companies across a couple of decades and two of those companies extensively engaging with other companies on projects to get me some exposure to closed source development organizations even at some other companies.