Are you an engineer? How often have you worked on something that would be noticeable immediately if you left? I’ve never in my career worked for an extended pe

Are you an engineer? How often have you worked on something that would be noticeable immediately if you left? I’ve never in my career worked for an extended period on something that was just maintenance. Software systems are extremely stable so long as no one is adding features or increasing usage. I have made (as part of a very small engineering team) a company close to a billion dollar profit on one project, but in the whole 5 years we built that thing, no one in the world would have noticed if we got fired. Because it was R&D. Engineers are R&D investments. If you decide “no more R&D”, then that’s fine, that’s a strategic business decision. But it doesn’t mean the people previously doing R&D were doing nothing. Where do people get these ideas?