I don't think that's a realistic solution right now so it makes sense they wouldn't try to do that. Scrambling to come up with a bunch of custom features using random volunteers is not likely to go well and won't solve the problem within a suitable timeline. They are definitely talking about what kind of improvements they want and are coordinating with the admins of the other instances so everyone is on the same page. From everything I've seen everyone involved is doing the best they can and trying to work towards improving Lemmy. That's great you can help with dev work, it looks like there's going to be a whole bunch of things to do so I'd encourage you to check out the Lemmy github and see where you can help out.