Not directly, but kinda, at least in my experience.
Clients and management generally understand that old code needs to be maintained. They don't love that reality, but that's not generally a tough sell unless they're completely clueless. And they're usually not completely clueless.
The tension in my experience comes when an engineer wants to perform something other than the fastest, sloppiest, filthiest duct-tape maintenance imaginable.
Management accepts the need for fixes, but often does not have the technical/___domain knowledge to understand the short- and long-term merits of Proposed Fix A versus Proposed Fix B. And naturally, incentives heavily push management toward the quick fixes by default. Time is money, after all. And managers are expected to meet quarterly and annual OKRs. We don't have a good way to quantify the long-term value of a "proper" fix versus a "duct tape" fix. And so on.
So for me maintenance work is difficult to separate from notions of longer-term software maintenance such as refactors, dependency upgrades, etc.
Clients and management generally understand that old code needs to be maintained. They don't love that reality, but that's not generally a tough sell unless they're completely clueless. And they're usually not completely clueless.
The tension in my experience comes when an engineer wants to perform something other than the fastest, sloppiest, filthiest duct-tape maintenance imaginable.
Management accepts the need for fixes, but often does not have the technical/___domain knowledge to understand the short- and long-term merits of Proposed Fix A versus Proposed Fix B. And naturally, incentives heavily push management toward the quick fixes by default. Time is money, after all. And managers are expected to meet quarterly and annual OKRs. We don't have a good way to quantify the long-term value of a "proper" fix versus a "duct tape" fix. And so on.
So for me maintenance work is difficult to separate from notions of longer-term software maintenance such as refactors, dependency upgrades, etc.