> So much of the incentive structure in software companies is to ship new features. Maintaining existing ones or fixing bugs is a career dead end Highly depend

> So much of the incentive structure in software companies is to ship new features. Maintaining existing ones or fixing bugs is a career dead end Highly dependent on where you work and what you consider a "dead end". You can't possibly be talking about becoming unemployable in the industry nor even a pay cut. The situation for senior devs is the opposite, actually. Maintenance is the long tail of every project. If you're not doing that, you're not really working in software.