I understand what you mean, but there is some “workarounds” that can be used to grow up Blender users, create more proximity with all the development and also get more money to have dev teams to each module, this don’t require to “hire people” exactly, but change a bit how BF talk with their users, but a lot of conversation is needed.
For example, Godot is making something pretty clever and creating a good opportunity to their users to sell their games using the official engine site with only one web page where they show the Godot projects, they use it like a portfolio for the engine and free marketing for devs.
Blender in other hand have nothing similar, Blender website is focused on generic marketing about what the application can do, they help no one and they also have no portfolio or external help.
A simple way to fix it is have a good conversation with Blender Artists and turn this site into the official forum and use the Blender Magazine like a MUCH, MUCH BETTER marketing, instead of generic links explains generic stuff, they can create a focused area for each module, like:
Animation | Sculpting | VFX and more, and put people from the magazine to update the links often, for a new user, have a artistic project in the Sculpting page, with a little interview and info about the projects is much interesting than generic descriptions.
For a game company, have examples from another companies that use Blender in their workflow is much better than look for weird YT tutorials.
This is also a way to expand Blender Swiss Knife capabilities, actually Blender cannot process HD sculpting like ZBrush, BUT, materials nodes create much more opportunities and is much more flexible, once the data is procedural and changes are not written in the mesh, in case of a later change, no need to rebuild the 3D, only tweak the material values, show people how Blender have a unique and extremely workflow and how interesting it is is a wonderful marketing.
The second way to expand it, is use a crowdfunding campaign to create devs teams to each module over time.
If Pablo or someone else have a little conversation with people like Yan Sculpts or Manicarta they will find out the more basic needed stuff to start, like a built-in layer system IMO, and them they can create a road map of how much time and devs they need to start a team, let’s say this number is 5 devs and 6 months of work, they can create a presentation showing the road map, and all the money they need, Yan can use his channel to talk with another Blender users and ask for help, he can even donate this video money to BF, even channels like Linux Tech Tips can be used to talk about the “business model of Blender” and so on. Off course have live streams with the devs and Yan and other people will make Blender more popular.
Another thing BF can do it’s a partnership with digital schools, instead of sell the product on Blender site, they can do a marketing related announcement, when I talk about sculpting and node materials a moment ago, you can place banners to tutorials that teach that and the digital school can done $1 or another value to the module that module crowdfunding.
With some conversation Blender can get money, have dedicated teams to each module, make Blender grows a lot in each area, have all the ideas that is need now only with artists and no need to hire new people right now.
And off course, some the ideas like mine AS, will require some conversation with opensubdiv to make a collaborative update.
BF just need a more collaborative marketing, and things will be much better to everyone. And in case someones know any blender dev that may can talk with BF CEO’s about it, just mark them or send the link.