Of course they're not worthless when you're submitting them in good faith with due diligence in troubleshooting/replicating steps. I <3 users, whether they write code or not that submit good bug reports and are willing to work with me to replicate/fix the issue. One does not need to be a developer to write a good bug report.
I volunteer a few days every month to triage bug reports at my developer job just to keep up my troubleshooting skills. I could probably not do this as a technical/team lead, but everyone on my team does, so I wouldn't make them do anything I wouldn't do. I like problem solving as well, so it can be fun trying to hunt down some obscure bug buried in a service that only manifests itself when the moons align in the customer environment.
Seeing some of the difficult customers our support staff have to pull information out of I have a ton of respect for those that organize bug reports in a coherent manner that shows they really care. Those that do, I go out of my way to help make their jobs easier (building them tools, simple scripting training, etc) and they pay it back by helping my development team.
I volunteer a few days every month to triage bug reports at my developer job just to keep up my troubleshooting skills. I could probably not do this as a technical/team lead, but everyone on my team does, so I wouldn't make them do anything I wouldn't do. I like problem solving as well, so it can be fun trying to hunt down some obscure bug buried in a service that only manifests itself when the moons align in the customer environment.
Seeing some of the difficult customers our support staff have to pull information out of I have a ton of respect for those that organize bug reports in a coherent manner that shows they really care. Those that do, I go out of my way to help make their jobs easier (building them tools, simple scripting training, etc) and they pay it back by helping my development team.