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Why? Work should be balanced between creating new code and maintaining existing code. And managers should value both.

by dolmen 6y ago

anonymoushn 6y ago
Because the company's internal rubric for performance reviews awards 0 points for this kind of work.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
You answered yourself. Maintenance is seen by business as a cost, innovation is seen as potentially bringing more money. The incentives are all wrong and that translate to engineers (and teams, and companies) chasing features and not fixing bugs. A rewrite is often the only way of getting enough resources to fix up things.
bluesnowmonkey 6y ago
They should value both but just don’t in my experience. Building a system can get you promoted. Performing maintenance to keep it running generally will not. Doesn’t matter if the maintenance project demonstrates a higher level of proficiency than the original development. Doesn’t matter that it’s extending the life of a system providing known value, as opposed to building something with theoretical value.
wccrawford 6y ago
Of course they should, but it just doesn't seem to work out like that. I was basically pushed out of my previous job because I was the bug-fix guy and liked it. When I was the 'new stuff' guy, I got big raises every year. When I moved to being the bug-fix guy, and other people were the 'new stuff' people, suddenly I stopped getting good raises and barely met inflation. Even my coworkers were heaping praise on someone who I knew was over-complicating things because he was doing new stuff. As I was leaving, a system that I had rewritten twice was up for another rewrite for more functionality. I would have loved to do it, and I knew I could. They gave it to someone else. I heard, 6 months after I left, that they failed and gave up on the rewrite. I am absolutely certain I could have done it again. Getting a new job got me a 40% pay raise. It's not that I wasn't still worth a lot more every year. It's that they couldn't see it because it was all maintenance, and not shiny new stuff. I still prefer bugfixes, and I still rock at them. But I end up doing mostly new stuff and don't say anything because I know how that goes.

Why? Work should be balanced between creating new code and maintaining existing code. And managers should value both.

by dolmen 6y ago

Why? Work should be balanced between creating new code and maintaining existing code. And managers should value both.

anonymoushn 6y ago

Because the company's internal rubric for performance reviews awards 0 points for this kind of work.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

You answered yourself. Maintenance is seen by business as a cost, innovation is seen as potentially bringing more money. The incentives are all wrong and that translate to engineers (and teams, and companies) chasing features and not fixing bugs. A rewrite is often the only way of getting enough resources to fix up things.

bluesnowmonkey 6y ago

They should value both but just don’t in my experience. Building a system can get you promoted. Performing maintenance to keep it running generally will not. Doesn’t matter if the maintenance project demonstrates a higher level of proficiency than the original development. Doesn’t matter that it’s extending the life of a system providing known value, as opposed to building something with theoretical value.

wccrawford 6y ago

Of course they should, but it just doesn't seem to work out like that. I was basically pushed out of my previous job because I was the bug-fix guy and liked it. When I was the 'new stuff' guy, I got big raises every year. When I moved to being the bug-fix guy, and other people were the 'new stuff' people, suddenly I stopped getting good raises and barely met inflation. Even my coworkers were heaping praise on someone who I knew was over-complicating things because he was doing new stuff. As I was leaving, a system that I had rewritten twice was up for another rewrite for more functionality. I would have loved to do it, and I knew I could. They gave it to someone else. I heard, 6 months after I left, that they failed and gave up on the rewrite. I am absolutely certain I could have done it again. Getting a new job got me a 40% pay raise. It's not that I wasn't still worth a lot more every year. It's that they couldn't see it because it was all maintenance, and not shiny new stuff. I still prefer bugfixes, and I still rock at them. But I end up doing mostly new stuff and don't say anything because I know how that goes.