I’ve seen this negative incentive at a much smaller level at a few companies of various sizes. It was what I was talking about a couple weeks ago about reading how Google is tackling it with maintenance motivated incentives from leadership.
For me, despite being a Tech Lead for 12… 15 years, something like that, I feel like I’m still learning what a Tech Lead does. Maybe the role has evolved, maybe I’ve grown, maybe both. Either way, from what I’ve seen in promotions, you only need to check a few boxes.
While a level may have a swath of boxes, you don’t need all of them, nor all of the time. Greenfield development certainly gives you an opportunity to check many of the boxes: owning new intent, creating architecture, outlining incentives, & selling it all.
For me, maintenance/brownfield work has gotten much more enjoyable as my skills have improved when I’m working in teams with good a CICD culture. I can thrive helping, teaching, and hopefully growing the team’s tech skills in this environment.
I’ve struggled, and seen others struggle too, when leadership either doesn’t encourage CICD, and/or doesn’t offer team autonomy to fix things. Unclear anyone can really grow there, but I’ve tried to help anyway while planning my exit.
I don’t think this is a 100% management problem; I think Tech Leads know of opportunities to let junior & mid-level devs shine, as well as where Staff/Distinguished Engineers an help. Providing those opportunities, and highlighting their contributions combats this.
You don’t always need a rewrite to allow a dev to “build a new thing that saves/makes a bunch of money”. Consistent, positive changes can lower costs over the short and long term while growing engineering skills.
Also modelling behavior in interacting with Business, Product, Designers, and senior leadership helps teach & empower devs to take ownership of both the work, and their careers. This also is easily shown as impact at Performance Management time.
Idealistic, I know. The contrast of experiences devs have seems fake, but I assure you they are real. I’ve worked at enough companies, and seen within large companies, that while one team may be on cloud 9, another is struggling… and these can change over time.
On the struggle bus to get requirements, to ship, battling technical debt, unhelpful observability; these are problems for both Managers and Individual contributors. At least in my role, I know I can help here AND grow people _while_ we maintain existing UI’s / services.
It’s a fun challenge to find opportunities for devs to own something and grow, to ask leading questions without them knowing it’s a leading question so they can figure things out for themselves with guard rails.
Beyond the team level, though, no idea. My hope is leading by example, and copying other tech leaders I admire, creates a local culture that influences others to adopt the good ideas, and those in turn spread the positive culture.
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