As indicated in the thread via his own words and pictures this is an off-brand switch controller, not a Nintendo official one. They don't have the same requirements for even features as the official Nintendo Pro or Joycon controllers.

Foone's pronouns are they/them

As the owner of a whole passel of shitty third party Switch controllers I have yet to encounter one where the pair button didn't turn it off.

May be this one didn't? Have a little sense of good faith for foone (of all people)?

Or OP just forgot to RTFM and is ranting because they don't know how to use what they bought? Wouldn't be the first time...

At the very least it's terrible UX design though.

I don’t have this device, but reading the manual there is no mention of any off-switch or off procedure. There is only syncing, charging, programming back buttons, adjusting the lights, changing light modes. And as for the lights, there are only 4 modes, none of which is “off”.

to be pedantic, is that an actual off switch? one that disconnects the battery? or a software defined low power mode?

Who reads the manual? I suspect the HN crowd tends to read them more often, even so, I suspect many of us avoid that until "necessary" (IE: I've been stuck on a problem I care about for too long)

Foone's pronouns are they/them