Personally I feel like I've been getting pretty high rewards here compared to Steem, but maybe it's just confirmation bias. Probably not in dollar equivalents, but in raw number of tokens.

I'm ecstatic to earn 20 cents worth on a post personally, but I set the bar basically at the bottom.

I will tell you that I myself am a bit discouraged from voting on cross posts from Steem, but I can't speak for anyone else.

You're probably a better programmer than me and seem to have more experience. Why not both complain and work to port over your favorite utilities?