I’d love to work on a maintenance project for a product I care about, though - and add small little incremental improvements over time and make my mark that way.

If there’s a hiring manager at Google that wants someone to babysit products that shouldn’t die, but can’t attract career-oriented people to work on, ping me :)

Me too. I would love my job to be "clean up tech debt all day"

The large majority of enterpise projects are maintenance, if you want to see a career die quickly focus on being an expert in technology fad X.

The best way to keep going is to diversify, not only being a generalist, but also extending the soft skills, don't funnel too much in technology for technology's sake, and the career will be just fine, even with maintenance projects.

Many of us would be perfectly happy spending our entire career making hundreds of thousands of dollars working on a niche product that we are passionate about.

If it is only career you are interested in, you would probably use Google as a ladder for higher positions elsewhere.

> Wanna see your career die quickly? Move to a maintenance project.

My org, which is more focused on maintenance than any other org at Google, has among the highest promotion rates. I personally lead a team whose primary job is related to code maintenance rather than product features. I've been promoted in the top 5% of promotion rates during my career.

It is true that there are maintenance teams that stagnate. It may be a different story for product managers or vps, but for engineers I've seen tremendous career success focused entirely on maintenance.