Same experience here. I've been using Macs and iOS devices for over a decade, and while I cannot say that it never works, I could count the successes on one hand (granted, I don't try very often after so much failure). I've even tried setting the "allow me to be discovered by" option to "everybody", and it still fails.

Maybe the problem is me, but I'm good at computers. I can make them do almost anything else in the catalog. Airdrop is a glaring exception.