[bikingbismuth]

The sad truth is that no one is getting a promotion to staff for just maintaining a service.

I wish this wasn’t so. At a previous job I had a VP tell me that my team was like a public utility and I took that as a compliment. Later my boss explained they were saying that they only noticed my team when something was broken. Sort of explained my lack of career progression in retrospect.

[mmikeff]

They could outsource this to someone only too grateful to keep it running for less than the cost of an internal engineer

[fefferkorn]

This is where you start your own company and sell "maintenance" to your company you work for.