"But that's not what you get from a software engineering position at the tech giants. You get to maintain old code." I wouldn't say that's true in general. It'

"But that's not what you get from a software engineering position at the tech giants. You get to maintain old code." I wouldn't say that's true in general. It's going to be a mix a both. But improving/fixing old code will often teach you a lot more than writing new code. You can both see clever things that other people have done and bad design decisions that are now causing you problems.