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You might say I've observed this many times in my career. I think the best move career-wise is to be one of the people who makes the new thing. Those who clean

You might say I've observed this many times in my career. I think the best move career-wise is to be one of the people who makes the new thing. Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. At least in my experience. Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? (Not someone who devised an innovation and then maintained it - pure maintenance)

bussierem 9y ago
I'd be very curious to know why this is getting downvoted, and if it has anything to do with the fact that YCombinator is a hub for the 'innovators' the post (and this comment) are talking about. Don't downvote because someone hurts your feelings - that's not what this site is for, guys.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Aw, it's just fake internet points. I don't worry about it too much
  - WaxProlix 9y ago
    It's also an issue of visibility. Downvoted comments are seen less and don't get to contribute to the zeitgeist. That's sort of by design and I'm not trying to have that conversation, just saying that it's more than "aw, just internet points".
watwut 9y ago
This is the situation where the reason behind downvotes would be appreciated. He/she said the truth - especially for startup environment.
- mjevans 9y ago
  It is easy to agree. It is difficult to tell if not-agreeing is due to a difference of opinion or the statement being off topic. Thus while it may seem natural to cast to two directions the implicit difference between agreeing or not is actually more nuanced. The /reason/ is important in the latter case.
lucasmullens 9y ago
I completely agree. Maintenance is important, but I feel I learn more and get more career growth out from jobs that involve building new things.
costcopizza 9y ago
The most famous maintainer(s) I can think of are the people who paint the Golden Gate Bridge.
tjoff 9y ago
Not saying you are wrong, but who is the most famous inventor you can think of? No no, from a startup, similar to the scenario depicted. That's right, none (+- a handful) - regardless, we aren't doing this for fame anyway (I'd imagine).
nostrademons 9y ago
It's a risk/reward trade-off. You're never going to be famous being the maintainer, but you'll also never be viewed as crazy, nor do you have to face outright failure. You hear about the innovators who succeed; you kinda shake your heads and pity the ones who don't.
devin_lane 9y ago
At the same time, a maintenance position can offer benefits as well. With the exception of emergency bug fixes, maintenance is likely to have a more stable work load which might appeal to those who want more work-life balance. Some engineers may prefer to spend their time on lower level tasks that aren't showy but are nevertheless important to get right. Working on threads/locking/synchronization may not be glamorous, but it's critical for the operation of everything else and difficult to do right. I think we should be putting more effort into recognizing/compensating those involved in maintenance work rather than steering folks away from it. The raw technology invention is important, but the maintenance work is what makes it ship and continue to work for customers. There are also plenty of widely-used projects remain relevant only due to maintenance. Projects like OpenSSL or the Linux Kernel come to mind here.
jasonlotito 9y ago
Name an innovator who didn't spend any time improving, maintaining, or cleaning up their work? Name an innovator who only ever innovated? Pure innovation.
majormajor 9y ago
>Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. It's a tradeoff. Innovating employee #10 at a big succesful startup will be better-rewarded than your average maintaining employee at, say, Facebook today, but that "maintainer" is going to be far better rewarded than innovating employee #5 at some-startup-whose-new-thing-proves-unwanted.
vic-traill 9y ago
Jon Postel perhaps?
dpatru 9y ago
Aren't software as a service and cloud computing examples of businesses that are primarily about maintenance? It seems to me that the best businesses are mostly about maintaining and profiting from some technology. Startups are advised to keep costs very low until they have "product-market fit", that is, until they have innovated enough to have made something that people want. After product-market fit has been achieved, marketing and sales begin to dominate; the technical innovation is over except for maintenance and incremental improvement. Most businesses don't require innovation at all. McDonald's, for example, didn't invent the hamburger, but it has grown large because of its ability to grow while maintaining high standards. Even businesses that we would think of as very innovative don't make their profits on continual innovation as much as growing and maintaining a standard process. YCombinator, for example, has a process of selecting great companies and nurturing them. The companies do a lot of innovating, but YC itself is basically maintaining and incrementally improving the innovation of Paul Graham and the other original founders. Profit comes during the maintenance stage.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  Most businesses don't require innovation at all. McDonald's, for example, didn't invent the hamburger, but it has grown large because of its ability to grow while maintaining high standards. McDonalds and its competitors have been continually innovating on the details of how to provider hamburgers and chips to customers quickly and cheaply.
  - sgift 9y ago
    That's not innovating, that's optimizing, an important aspect of good maintenance.
flukus 9y ago
> Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. Next time I have a say in hiring I'm not even going to bother looking at people who have only done green fields work. They've never had the opportunity to learn from their (or others) mistakes. > Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? (Not someone who devised an innovation and then maintained it - pure maintenance) What do you consider innovation? Two I'd point to are Bram Moolenaar (vim) and Linus Torvalds. They both wanted to clone existing systems, not to innovate. The same goes for many other open source creators, they had a need to solve, it wasn't a creative exercise.
thisrod 9y ago
> who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? The pope.
kobeya 9y ago
> Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? I can think of a few, actually. Pretty much every BDFL in every open source project ever. Most famous is probably Linus Torvalds. He invented the first version of Linux, yes, but he's been primarily a maintainer not inventor ever since.
- nightcracker 9y ago
  > (Not someone who devised an innovation and then maintained it - pure maintenance) Everything you've mentioned doesn't count.

bussierem 9y ago

I'd be very curious to know why this is getting downvoted, and if it has anything to do with the fact that YCombinator is a hub for the 'innovators' the post (and this comment) are talking about. Don't downvote because someone hurts your feelings - that's not what this site is for, guys.

draw_down 9y ago
Aw, it's just fake internet points. I don't worry about it too much
- WaxProlix 9y ago
  It's also an issue of visibility. Downvoted comments are seen less and don't get to contribute to the zeitgeist. That's sort of by design and I'm not trying to have that conversation, just saying that it's more than "aw, just internet points".

watwut 9y ago

This is the situation where the reason behind downvotes would be appreciated. He/she said the truth - especially for startup environment.

mjevans 9y ago
It is easy to agree. It is difficult to tell if not-agreeing is due to a difference of opinion or the statement being off topic. Thus while it may seem natural to cast to two directions the implicit difference between agreeing or not is actually more nuanced. The /reason/ is important in the latter case.

lucasmullens 9y ago

I completely agree. Maintenance is important, but I feel I learn more and get more career growth out from jobs that involve building new things.

costcopizza 9y ago

The most famous maintainer(s) I can think of are the people who paint the Golden Gate Bridge.

tjoff 9y ago

Not saying you are wrong, but who is the most famous inventor you can think of? No no, from a startup, similar to the scenario depicted. That's right, none (+- a handful) - regardless, we aren't doing this for fame anyway (I'd imagine).

nostrademons 9y ago

It's a risk/reward trade-off. You're never going to be famous being the maintainer, but you'll also never be viewed as crazy, nor do you have to face outright failure. You hear about the innovators who succeed; you kinda shake your heads and pity the ones who don't.

devin_lane 9y ago

At the same time, a maintenance position can offer benefits as well. With the exception of emergency bug fixes, maintenance is likely to have a more stable work load which might appeal to those who want more work-life balance. Some engineers may prefer to spend their time on lower level tasks that aren't showy but are nevertheless important to get right. Working on threads/locking/synchronization may not be glamorous, but it's critical for the operation of everything else and difficult to do right. I think we should be putting more effort into recognizing/compensating those involved in maintenance work rather than steering folks away from it. The raw technology invention is important, but the maintenance work is what makes it ship and continue to work for customers. There are also plenty of widely-used projects remain relevant only due to maintenance. Projects like OpenSSL or the Linux Kernel come to mind here.

jasonlotito 9y ago

Name an innovator who didn't spend any time improving, maintaining, or cleaning up their work? Name an innovator who only ever innovated? Pure innovation.

majormajor 9y ago

>Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. It's a tradeoff. Innovating employee #10 at a big succesful startup will be better-rewarded than your average maintaining employee at, say, Facebook today, but that "maintainer" is going to be far better rewarded than innovating employee #5 at some-startup-whose-new-thing-proves-unwanted.

vic-traill 9y ago

Jon Postel perhaps?

dpatru 9y ago

Aren't software as a service and cloud computing examples of businesses that are primarily about maintenance? It seems to me that the best businesses are mostly about maintaining and profiting from some technology. Startups are advised to keep costs very low until they have "product-market fit", that is, until they have innovated enough to have made something that people want. After product-market fit has been achieved, marketing and sales begin to dominate; the technical innovation is over except for maintenance and incremental improvement. Most businesses don't require innovation at all. McDonald's, for example, didn't invent the hamburger, but it has grown large because of its ability to grow while maintaining high standards. Even businesses that we would think of as very innovative don't make their profits on continual innovation as much as growing and maintaining a standard process. YCombinator, for example, has a process of selecting great companies and nurturing them. The companies do a lot of innovating, but YC itself is basically maintaining and incrementally improving the innovation of Paul Graham and the other original founders. Profit comes during the maintenance stage.

adrianratnapala 9y ago
Most businesses don't require innovation at all. McDonald's, for example, didn't invent the hamburger, but it has grown large because of its ability to grow while maintaining high standards. McDonalds and its competitors have been continually innovating on the details of how to provider hamburgers and chips to customers quickly and cheaply.
- sgift 9y ago
  That's not innovating, that's optimizing, an important aspect of good maintenance.

flukus 9y ago

> Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. Next time I have a say in hiring I'm not even going to bother looking at people who have only done green fields work. They've never had the opportunity to learn from their (or others) mistakes. > Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? (Not someone who devised an innovation and then maintained it - pure maintenance) What do you consider innovation? Two I'd point to are Bram Moolenaar (vim) and Linus Torvalds. They both wanted to clone existing systems, not to innovate. The same goes for many other open source creators, they had a need to solve, it wasn't a creative exercise.

thisrod 9y ago

> who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? The pope.

kobeya 9y ago

> Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? I can think of a few, actually. Pretty much every BDFL in every open source project ever. Most famous is probably Linus Torvalds. He invented the first version of Linux, yes, but he's been primarily a maintainer not inventor ever since.

nightcracker 9y ago
> (Not someone who devised an innovation and then maintained it - pure maintenance) Everything you've mentioned doesn't count.