[alisonatwork]

This is my favorite part of the job too - digging through weird, ancient spaghetti code and finding obscure bugs. Then either crafting a fix to the code, or creating some kind of migration path or workaround to mitigate the problem. Unfortunately in a lot of companies this kind of "maintenance mode" job is not well-paid or well-respected, and is given to the least-qualified devs. I keep finding myself promoted out of the position, or assigned to work on something that supposedly has more "impact" (read: increasing revenue and/or encouraging investment), even though from my perspective the most impactful work is helping loyal customers who already value the product highly enough that they're paying for support.

How did you deal with the "overqualified" problem, or did you switch early enough that it didn't matter? From my end, I have over 20 years of development experience, and I feel that often disqualifies me from consideration by a lot of employers.