[anthonj]

I am no longer a junior, but would have been upset to be tasked with refreshing the old historical obsolete laundry (no matter how sacred or distinguished), expecially when I already had experience delivering safety critical products packing much more modern technologies.

The opportunity they would be offering is not rare at all! The opportunity to research and design something truly new on the other way is very scarce.

[joseda-hg]

Also, many decisions taken Probably can be traced to limitations / idiosincracies of the era

And you're left with a codebase that has been in hands of 6 Decades of probably great engineers that have already done a lot, plus any of the arcane cruft of such a long lived and esoteric project

It's a great CV highlight, but I don't know if it's the best learning opportunity

[rbanffy]

What have you worked on that is as cool as a space probe that's cruising in interstellar space and still collecting valuable data?

There are a lot of things as cool as, done by people I know, such as the gyros on the Webb telescope, the APU in the F-35, or a small rack-mountable Cesium reference clock, but there aren't many opportunities like that.

[anthonj]

That's the thing. You only have the cool factor, but that wears off very quickly when you are maintaining legacy code and tools and then your collegues are playing with the new hot and shiny toys.

I won't write about the projects I've been involved with for privacy, but to give you an idea some of my old team members were involved in ams-02 for example.

[SoftTalker]

You would be able to go to your grave saying "I worked on the Voyager project." That will never not be interesting, or memorable.

[butlike]

Is that because juniors want to leave their name on something? I ask honestly since I shared a lot of the same sentiment as you, and never quite got an understanding as to why working on the cool new thing was "more fun" even if a lot of the projects under-the-hood were recycled.

[matheusmoreira]

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

> We’re programmers.

> Programmers are, in their hearts, architects, and the first thing they want to do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place flat and build something grand.

> We’re not excited by incremental renovation: tinkering, improving, planting flower beds.

[rbanffy]

He's very wrong.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> The opportunity they would be offering is not rare at all!

The opportunity to maintain software running on a spacecraft is not rare? I don't think so. And those two particular spacecrafts? I'd take that job in a flash.