Is there any company where churning through a list of bugs and maintenance projects will get you further in the long term than launching new things? Hacker News generally praises "ship it" culture, where experimentation and measurement is prioritized as the way to succeed. This is considered a good thing in most places and the incentives are not unique to Google.
Consulting. Not a longterm in the company thing, but there is money in coming in and cleaning up others messes and get them on a path that can be maintained.
For myself - I've got projects I've helped as above. I'm not a maintenance/sustaining kind of guy, but many companies gamble on a "make it work now" scenario and then need help after the fact to bring it back to reality for long term support.
It's not sexy, I don't do it often, but if someone has an interesting challenge to get from X to sustaining, I'm happy to hear and maybe work something out biz wise.
"Hacker News generally praises "ship it" culture, where experimentation and measurement is prioritized as the way to succeed."
HN has a VC/startup focus. Maintainable code means a lot less to a quickly growing (and possibly pivoting) startup because fast growth almost always outruns the maintenance burden.
On the other hand poorly written and maintained software can drown a normal business. These companies typically have 20-30% margins and so even doubling the cost of maintenance can remove any profit.
