I think this is much less about Google developers not using their apps. My experience as a Googler is that people are actually quite good about working on apps they themselves use frequently. "Dogfooding" is a common term around the office.

What I think is going on here is:

* You have some app developers working on an app and caring about its particular user experience.

* Then you have framework UX designers/developers working on new design systems and rolling them out across hundreds of apps.

Those two have limited coordination with each other. So when a new design system like Material drops into every app, unconsidered interactions between the design system and the app's specific UI go sideways and no one is in a good position to notice or address it.

Google certainly takes the blame in this case, but I don't think it's a problem unique to Google either. There is always a tension between wanting a consistent user experience across many products and features and wanting a user experience that makes the most sense for one particular product or feature.

Yes, it's annoying that you can't get to stuff under the plus button. But users really do learn that "oh, the plus button will always be on the bottom right" and that provides real value to them for that to be consistently true across many apps. It makes each app easier to be productive in.

User experience design is hard and I don't think there's a silver bullet, though obviously this case is particularly annoying.

The silver bullet is caring.

There must be someone working on that app who notices those pain points.

"The turtoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping."

Why is that?

Perhaps they're incentivised not to care. Perhaps the job is just a paycheque. Perhaps they mirror those around them.

Either way, the end result is the same. They don't care and their users suffer.