I have the reverse experience : I did tons of technically challenging greenfield projects that were pretty much using my IQ, and didn't start building skills an

I have the reverse experience : I did tons of technically challenging greenfield projects that were pretty much using my IQ, and didn't start building skills and work habits (the stuff employers actually pay for) until after I was made to also maintain one of the greenfield projects. I haven't and will never be what people tend to call a purely maintenance programmer, but the parts of my job that interact with existing systems are more challenging, more important, and teach me more (from looking at the patterns in existing code) than the greenfield parts. Where the misconceptions come from is it's easier to be "good enough" when you do maintenance, so a lot of people don't try to understand the existing context, don't interact with non-technical people, and don't stretch themselves to understand the business, because they mistakenly think their job is writing code.