Ask HN: Hired as software engineer but not doing software development work

That's normal. Green field new development is rare. I haven't written anything really new in months, it's just upgrading, fixing, finetuning existing systems.

Depends on the company/team size. Most established companies/teams have requirements like these where you are just running scripts and not much to do. If you want to do real development/programming work, join a startup or a smaller company (under 100 employees ideally).

It's very common in the startups I've come across, on the contrary, in very large companies, everyone performs their own duties and arranges them clearly.

That's the "second" technical interview they didn't tell you about, to decide whether you are able to work on new developments.

Sounds like you got hired in a junior position and they're giving you junior-ish work to get up to speed.

welcome to the machine.