Wouldn't this not happen if the employers just paid more? From what I understand, people do resume-driven development because they want to work at a place that will pay more at some point.
If I was maintaining some decades-old legacy code and knew that my employer will most likely still be around and pay me a competitive salary for the rest of my life, I wouldn't mind just mastering COBOL.
But most companies go bust or lay off developers at some point, so keeping yourself employable by working with the latest tech stack is unfortunately quite a necessity.
[1] https://marker.medium.com/why-dont-tech-companies-pay-their-...
> If I was maintaining some decades-old legacy code and knew that my employer will most likely still be around and pay me a competitive salary for the rest of my life, I wouldn't mind just mastering COBOL.
That is how I feel too. In fact I'd prefer working on something that really lasts compared to the latest fad. But the differences in salary make this a difficult choices.
Resume driven development is a bad anti-pattern and leads to software nightmares. Avoid it.
> Everyone wanted to work on greenfield projects and technologies that would look good on their resume going into the next job.
Greenfield = easy. Fixing a 10 year old architectural mistake = hard.
> Blaming product managers is an easy out
Resume driven development and product managers who make changes for the sake of their own resume are two sides of the same coin. It's all putting good for yourself over good for your customer and good for your employer.