In big companies doing the "mundane" things like solid incremental engineering is an irrational career strategy. Most product managers / careerists want to write the whiz bang new development rather than deal with the pain that is backwards compatibility, efficiency, multi platform support.

I miss the 80s when it was something that nerds did because of passion. Everyone wants to be a rock star developer now.

Seems like we are headed to a dark age of software.