Even products that don't have a mandate to become attention-sucking get ruined eventually. Developers gotta develop---so once the product is pretty much done, it becomes a feature-cram-fest to try to bolt-on every crazy thing they can think of, including the kitchen sink. Meanwhile, long-standing bugs go unaddressed, security issues crop up, quality drops, and long-time users feel more and more alienated. I've seen this pattern repeat at pretty much every commercial application job I've ever had. Nobody has any concept of a product being finished. Nobody knows what maintenance mode is. It's just "Keep developing!" forever until the product doesn't even do its core function anymore.