You can have great engineers in maintenance, I didn't say all great engineers are on greenfield work. The ones working on greenfield projects have been the one

You can have great engineers in maintenance, I didn't say all great engineers are on greenfield work. The ones working on greenfield projects have been the ones used as the bar to measure other engineers by, in my experience. This works both to glorify the greenfield engineers and hold back the engineers stuck in maintenance. Motivation is very personal. Some people are motivated in everything they do. A lot of engineers are motivated by working on high quality code or new technologies. Others are motivated by perceived fairness in how work and rewards are assigned. For those latter two sets of people, being stuck in maintenance and having greenfield engineers used as examples of how to be better can be demotivating.