Even when a company sells maintenance/support/compliance, the incentive is still to put as few actual development hours into these columns as possible, and to pay as little as possible for those hours.
What is actually being sold is a promise, and that really comes from the sales department, not the engineering department. Once the customer signs the contract, the incentive is to do the minimum possible to keep the promise--or better said, break it infrequently and non-egregiously enough that the customer doesn't churn (or sue). So you'll unfortunately still be viewed as a cost-center at many companies if you're working on this stuff.
