It's been an age since I've worked in an agency, but back in the IE era, at least once a month a dev would ask to use a 'modern feature'. Something to support some a new piece of design from the design team, or save hours or days of dev, or remove the need for hacky 'fixes' that could be done cleanly with modern browser support.
So off to analytics they would go. "X thousand users are using IE8. We're converting at X%. Removing support for IE8 just means these people will shop elsewhere and we'll lose X thousand pounds a month. You need to support IE8."
Believe me, I wish it was as simple as saying developers are "part of the problem," because it would be an easy fix. But try selling that (without a huuuuge struggle!) to the person who holds the purse strings.
Sadly the new features usually only came on new sites. It's much easier to push it through when you're not cutting off an existing income stream.
So off to analytics they would go. "X thousand users are using IE8. We're converting at X%. Removing support for IE8 just means these people will shop elsewhere and we'll lose X thousand pounds a month. You need to support IE8."
Believe me, I wish it was as simple as saying developers are "part of the problem," because it would be an easy fix. But try selling that (without a huuuuge struggle!) to the person who holds the purse strings.
Sadly the new features usually only came on new sites. It's much easier to push it through when you're not cutting off an existing income stream.