Mostly at big organizations when programmers join teams, their job is mostly to fix bugs and maintain existing code. Rarely they get to write code from scratch. Correct me if I'm wrong those who are working at big companies.
I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
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Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#12No, not even at entry-level. 90% maintenance is a disaster. 60 to 75 percent might be typical for entry-level programmers, and that's bad, but 90 is abysmal. If development is done properly, "maintenance" isn't some massive chore. It's pay-as-you-go and takes the form of proper testing, early design review and refactoring, and a shared sense of responsibility for the upkeep of the code (none of this "give maintenance…
My first real programming job was 100% maintenance. It was horrible. Luckily I was able to get out after 6 months, but still wonder about the other guys I was working with there.. hopefully they got out.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#13Mostly at big organizations when programmers join teams, their job is mostly to fix bugs and maintain existing code. Rarely they get to write code from scratch. Correct me if I'm wrong those who are working at big companies.
I'll add a couple of data points to your observation :) .
On the two large companies I've worked for, my and most of my team's job was to maintain (and sometimes expand) existing code. Visual Basic 6 was the best I could hope for (I've maintained lots of crap, from Clipper up to Forte TOOL currently, and made a lot of reports in Crystal and SSRS).
All the cool projects were either outsourced, bought from a smaller outside company, or fiercely fought for in a battle of politics :) .
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#14The guy is talking about quitting at the end and starting his own thing. My advice is:
1) first find another job that pays more and is generally less ridiculous, with the realization that its hard to find jobs that don't involve a lot of maintenance
2) give your notice
3) while working at your new job, bootstrap your own startup
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#15I won't address his pay, but as for his work, this guy is getting bogged down responding to emails about projects that are in maintenance mode, with no new development approved. There are three possibilities. One is that he failed to mention that he has been tasked with user support. The second is that the old projects are buggy or fragile as hell, and maintenance is a big and valuable job that deserves the time he puts into it.
The third possibility is that he is being barraged with support requests and enhancement requests which are NOT his job to handle. In that case, this guy's manager needs to run interference and get the other managers out of his face. When you want new features added to projects in maintenance mode, you aren't allowed to harass a developer who has been ordered to only fix bugs on those projects. (It's normal to do so, but that's because people are dicks.) When you need support, you don't harass a developer who isn't tasked with support. (Again, it's completely normal, but only because people are dicks.) The people taking up his time are taking advantage of his experience to get work done that they can't get done the right way. His manager needs to tell all those folks to back the #@%^ off unless they have a valid bug report. Then he can concentrate on his real job: his new development projects and bug fixes on the maintenance projects.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#16It's not the 90% maintenance that's the problem, it's this:
"But then I got to hear I wasn't allowed to improve the existing code and to only focus on bug fixes when a bug gets reported."
A product that is not worth improving? This is called a hopeless product, a hopeless company, and a hopeless job prospect.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#17No, not even at entry-level. 90% maintenance is a disaster. 60 to 75 percent might be typical for entry-level programmers, and that's bad, but 90 is abysmal. If development is done properly, "maintenance" isn't some massive chore. It's pay-as-you-go and takes the form of proper testing, early design review and refactoring, and a shared sense of responsibility for the upkeep of the code (none of this "give maintenance…
My first real programming job was 100% maintenance. It was horrible. Luckily I was able to get out after 6 months, but still wonder about the other guys I was working with there.. hopefully they got out.
He should be glad it's not 90% maintenance and 10% meetings
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#18I had a developer quit after a week for something similar. One application to do bug fixes and extend. He was allowed to do refactoring but it had to stay mostly in "experimental" branches so we could limit the risk of merging changes into production code. The guy just wanted to re-write everything he saw and refused to consider why we might not want massive changes to a codebase he saw as terrible. We were willing to let him refactor all he wanted as long as we tested and released the code in a controlled manner.
If this guy is working on 15 different apps, with no guidance about scheduling or priorities he is in an untenable position.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#19> (badly coded, developed by multiple programmers over the years, handles the same tasks in different ways, zero structure) Yeah, that's totally normal for a mature application. Better get used to it. > At this moment I'm slightly beginning to get crazy from the daily mails of users (read managers) for each application I have to maintain. Maybe not normal, but common . It's really up to you to manage your business re…
That's a terrible attitude to encourage. Accepting the status-quo as a junior is a great way to encourage them to never improve or question the more debatable practices.
Teaching juniors to care about software quality and software maintainability is hugely important in order to encourage an overall improvement within the software dev industry.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#20After the first sprint, I mean, after you have validated your first MMF, it is all maintenance anyway.