Part of the problem is when you are in that position it’s also easy to move to other interesting projects internally.
Then the real choice is between doing boring maintenance or useful new things at same pay.
Then the real choice is between doing boring maintenance or useful new things at same pay.
The basic issue, it seems, is that the higher-ups simply don’t care about the products themselves, other than for them to serve as a profit center.
The end result is a doom loop that if the team can’t retain enough staffing, developers will be overwhelmed by the boring maintenance work, which leads to more team transfers. They do use contractors to mitigate the issue but IMO it doesn’t work in every case.