Becoming a "maintenance developer"
- by anon
So I've kind of been getting angry about the current position I'm in, and I'd love to get other developers' input on this.
I've been at my current place of employment for about 11 months now. When I began, I was working on all new features. I basically worked on an entire new web project for the first 5-6 months I was here. After this, I was moved to more of a service oriented role (which was still great, all new stuff for me), and I was in this role for about the past 5-6 months. Here's where the problem comes in.
Basically, a couple of days ago I was made the support/maintenance guy. Now, we have an IT support team, so I'm not talking that kind of support, I'm talking more of a second level support guy (when the guys on the surface can't really get to the root of the issue), coupled with working on maintenance issues that have been lingering in the backlog for a while. To me, a developer with about 3 years of experience, this is kind of disheartening.
With the type of work place this is, I wouldn't be surprised if these support issues take up most of my days, and I barely make it to working on maintenance issues. Also, most of these support issues aren't even related to code, they are more or less just knowing the system architecture, working with making sure services are running/getting started properly, handling/fixing bad data, etc. I'm a developer, so this part sucks. Also, even when I do have time to work maintenance, these are basically just bug fixes/improving bad code, so this sucks as well, however at least it's related to coding.
Am I wrong for getting angry here? I don't want to really complain about it, but to be honest, I wasn't spoken to about this or anything, I was kind of just sent an e-mail letting me know I'm the guy for this type of thing, and that was that. The entire team took a few minutes to give me their "that sucks" talk, because they know how annoying it is to be on support for the type of work we do, so I know I'm not the only guy that knows it's not that great of an opportunity.
I'm just kind of on the fence about how to move forward. Obviously I'm just going to continue working for the time being, no point making a bad impression on anybody, but I'd like to know how you guys would approach this situation, or how you think I should be feeling about it/how you guys would feel.
Thanks guys.
