Put in concrete terms, do you want to be one of the two engineers exiled to maintaining Reader because you pissed someone off to keep the geeks off Google’s back?
From what I've heard even their performance reviews heavily focus on bringing new products to market or working on exciting projects, so even if Google needs it there's a chance you're at the top of the list for layoffs anyway.
They need to create a subsidiary of Alphabet called Google Maintenance or something and explicitly it only does boring maintenance and promotes on a mechanized schedule.
For the kind of money that's on offer? I would imagine it would suit a lot of people. Fix a few bugs, add some diagnostics, see what the customers think should be changed? Why wouldn't you, it seems like the sort of thing you could get someone to do.
Because at most companies it’s probably a recipe to not get bonuses, RSUs, promotions, good reviews, and other teams may not want to touch you—out of sight out of mind.
And guess who is high on the list if cuts are to be made?
Plenty of people would take a steady non-exciting maintenance job, especially if it paid remotely close to what Google pays. Many would even prefer it to a more exciting job.
There are thousands of companies that manage to maintain much more boring apps with salaries much lower than Google's.
