In a company I used to work for, "sustaining engineering" was the team of developers that handled all of the bugs and issues reported by customers on old-but-still-technically-supported versions of the products. (The ones who worked on current versions of the products where just "engineering.")

So basically heroku will fix whatever is broken, but don't expect any new features or development.

From a business perspective, this means they will not be investing in innovation on the platform anymore. Instead, they will focus their efforts on maintaining the current operations and keeping the lights on.

I don't understand the dismissiveness. I think it's pretty clear. Keeping it going for the current users, but not trying to innovate. It might seem weird in an industry that prizes constant innovation and disruption, but this is a mature thing to do.

Could have just said we will Keep the Lights on

I am sure that the guy whose name is on the Post didn't even write this himself. Probably some corporate writer using LLM :).

Or some kind of twisted brain with a "fake it till you make it! or continue to fake it" attitude. I think people doing that stuff for long enough almost have no other choice but to believe themselves, that they are doing net positive work, otherwise the cognitive dissonance would be too great.

We've been optimizing for decades to engineer the bullshit-generating super-soldiers required to craft modern PR statements.

Surely it's a typo and they meant "sustainable"?

Otherwise IMO such an odd word choice. Definition:

>> providing physical or mental strength or support

It's what CA/Broadcom does to literally every software product they own.

It's like PBS, they are going to beg for your money now with a sustaining engineering membership