[MaxBarraclough]

> you're just going to lose a tonne of people because they don't want to do what you're telling them and you won't be able to hire good people with your priorities because no one is going to believe they can have a good career at Google by prioritizing stability and long term support

I don't follow. Wouldn't ridding Google of its reputation for inadequate maintenance, make it a more prestigious employer? Its reputation for paying well wouldn't change. How would this lead to an exodus?

[v7p1Qbt1im]

Not among potential employees I would guess.

Obviously generalizing here, but most engineers (especially fresh graduates) would rather work on a new thing than do maintenance, if given the choice. Google offers a pretty good value proposition: Lots of money and you get to work at new exiting projects and if you don‘t like it you can change to something you like. There‘s obviously more nuance to this, but that seems like a pretty good deal for many people.

[Traster]

Reputation is a lagging indicator. You have to deal with the fact you're trying to recruit people who care about backwards compatibility into a company with a strong reputation for not caring about that. You're going to have the bad reputation long after the underlying problem is fixed.