There are lots of greenfield-only programmers who build something (by glueing stuff together), then they proceed to ship their barely working software to get that promotion / bonus and they run away to the next project
They never have to maintain anything, some poor soul has to fix the broken software.
They also dont even know what mistakes they made, since they arent there to solve it.
I think there’s something to be said for taking a job on a late stage project early in your career, participating in RCA analysis of all of the problems, and then picturing yourself in the room when those decisions are made and asking if you would have made the same decisions or better ones. Then work next on a greenfield project to test your theories out and adjust/grow.
I never felt like I had 1 year of experience 5 times because I moved between several kinds of projects at different lifecycle phases and with different constraints, and drew lots of parallels between them. At the end of five years I had project histories in my brain that spanned more than ten years. And got jobs that should have gone to someone with 8 years’ experience. I do not think this was a coincidence.
They never have to maintain anything, some poor soul has to fix the broken software.
They also dont even know what mistakes they made, since they arent there to solve it.