Maintenance vs creating new products

Question

What are peoples thoughts on working on core infrastructure and scaling issues for existing products rather than new products? New products always seem exiciting and attracts engineers, but I feel like theres a lot of exciting learning buried within the maintenance of core projects. Super underrated to learn about the main competencies of a company that becomes the engine that allows for new products to thrive. And people don't really mention the part where a lot of new projects don't really end up working out.

Muscat · Accepted Answer

I think maintenance is underrated. You get to really understand aa product by maintaining it. I'm working on a new product but I really only understand the part that I'm doing... which wouldn't be too helpful if I were to try to explain the technical aspects of the other parts.

19g6vl0ivebs0 · Answer

New products seem more exciting because people usually prefer the creative part. Writing code is often way-easier/more-fun than reading code and understanding a system built by others. But you can learn a huge amount from legacy code both good and bad. Over the years one of my favorite things has become taking on some old code that no one else wants , refactoring it and fixing it up like new.

g615l02iiyr3 · Answer

I prefer incremental changes especially for infrastructure. Since there are a lot of changes that go on over a period that were made based on experience. It is also important to re write for ease of maintainance when necessary. It is more nuanced than one vs the other imo

undertone · Answer

I totally agree with what you’re saying, but as you said new products just *seem* more exciting and that’s all that matters. Perhaps legacy teams working on important things need to do a rebrand / marketing makeover

Maintenance vs creating new products

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