Everyone on the Forums thinks they’re doing a bad job.
Just about every Content Creator thinks they’re doing a bad job.
I’m pretty sure every Developer is just some Bronze Player who Balances stuff however the hell they want because they died to a lucky Genji Shuriken one too many times.
They listen to Bobby Kotick who tells them to keep squeezing the paypigs for cash money 
The business model is speaking. Farm the cashcows at an efficient rate.
Bobby and Data.
That’s it. It’s not big secret.
They balance by data.
Honestly though some of their decisions are still baffling. This recent balance patch that buffed Orisa comes to mind. I know they have a Hog rework plan. Its still very odd to temporarily buff Orisa with the reasoning so she can shut down Hog more effectively rather than just hitting Hog with a temporary nerf until the rework is ready.
I believe they listen to their managers. I’m pretty sure they pop in to look and test out theories in a closed testing server and make suggestions with one another, more than likely chat with the guy(s) who they internally chose for the hero balancing but ultimately the final decision has to go through management.
They balance by giving Mercy 5 extra pistol ammo.
They have their own design philosophy. They don’t really listen to anyone.
Data. Player count is still rising month over month, in spite of what people on these forums complain about.
Yeah, it’s called a Dartboard.
Shareholders.
They’ve described multiple times their “balance triangle” where they weigh data, player sentiment, and their own guts to come to decisions.
So yeah, players only factor into about 33% of their decisions.
You have some evidence?
They are trying to balance multiple plates at once. It is tricky when you know a hero is imbalanced (either over or underpowered) but are limited in what you can change.
As an example you don’t buff raw healing because you want to avoid fights dragging out too long. You don’t buff CC and shields because the community finds them unfun and you don’t want a hero to be trash outside of a synergy.
The content creators, and higher ranks, largely have a problem with Sojourn because with a Mercy pocket she is broken. However due to the nerfs, without a pocket she honestly is average at best. So so you need to trash tier alone or do you adjust Mercy? Either way people will complain. The long term answer is probably Mercy, given that this happened due to Mercy before and will again as damage boost limits design, but the better short term play might be to gutter Sojourn.
h ttps://activeplayer.io/overwatch-2/
64% increase in the playerbase from the last month OW1 was online to the last 30 days in OW2. Every month since the launch of OW2 there’s been a net increase.
Flats :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
It really is data
Its not the forum, streamers or owl. Complaining here never amounts to anything guys
They balance based on data, but they interpret data incorrectly. I’d recommend going on YT to find the breakdown of how they ignore Survivorship bias.
Basically they see good winrate = good character.
For an example of why this isn’t right, barely anyone in high rank plays Sombra anymore, but the ones that still do are one-tricks who know her inside and out. They’re able to play out of their minds and keep a good winrate, despite her being garbage. So overall, Sombra on average has a high winrate, but she still sucks, its just that she’s so bad that nobody picks her, so there isn’t much contribution to the data.
And they balance by giving Brig 50 extra shield health despite the fact that the likes of Roadhog and Sojourn are running rampant.
They are identifying problems, and doing small changes to fix them, and then repeating the process.
For bigger changes they are spending time making sure they work.
They know she is garbage, that is why she is getting a rework. The reason she isn’t being buffed has nothing to do with survivorship bias.
I’ll give a forums answer which backs that data up. People are complaining about being matched with new players every 3rd game. That means, there is a lot of new players.