I've found the same thing myself. I started by writing a lot of posts about improvement suggestions, and even though they didn't get much as far as upvotes, I noticed "higher ups" starting to discuss them, and a few were actually used in some way.
A lot of people think that the devs aren't doing much, but as someone with a development background I can tell it is quite the opposite. The reputation system and promote features are just two recent examples.
I am really impressed with what they are doing, and have high hopes for Steemit's future.