Agreed, many people don't realize that software development takes a long time to finish, no matter the scope and complexity of the product. You still have to design, code, and test your work, and make sure whatever you do doesn't negatively affect anything else that exists (regression testing).
Imagine if an enterprise-level company - say Microsoft - is being pressured by its clients to do stuff faster just because and so they put out that piece of software as early as it can by cutting corners and not testing. Let's say it vomited out a new version of Windows in under a year, meeting the deadline. Did that product make it to the customers? Sure. Does it work well? Likely not. Will said customers complain? Absolutely.
It doesn't matter if the developer is a large company or a small team of people, the same development process still exists. Heck, smaller teams have it worse because they're likely doing this full-time and no one could cover for them if ever there's downtime.
In fact, I feel like the quality of the work degrades when there's a massive expectation breathing down their necks; this is kinda like people asking artists down at DA or some other outlet to make the best artwork for pennies, then whine when said work got late a couple of days or wasn't up to their expectations. Like wtf do you expect if they're short on time?