I guess we're just maturing in different ways. Your definition sounds like a big company doing less-rewarding work and middle management. For me, it was realizing you don't have to move towards management or dealing with lots of "crap work" (can't avoid it all of course). Also with maturity comes the realization that things that need to be done and being happy while doing it don't have to be mutually exclusive.
If you were tasked with maintaining a 10 year old codebase, your happiness really doesn't matter. If you don't find code maintenance enjoyable work, you're not going to enjoy the work. Sure, you might be able to make a game of it - to make it enjoyable - but that has no real bearing on your maturity as a programmer, just your personality.
That some programmers truly enjoy their work is a gift that they are lucky to have; not a sign of maturity.
> If you were tasked with maintaining a 10 year old codebase
Then I quit my job. As a quality senior you have the leverage to pick where and how you work. Otherwise, you may be thinking of just a tenured junior or someone who was given a title of "senior". This is why I said earlier "part of maturing into a senior dev is having the experience to know what makes you happy"...not just doing what someone tells you.
Heh. I actually enjoy maintaining old code, as long as that means I can improve it while adding new functionality.
If it means "no, we can't change that method with a 200+ cyclomatic complexity because the NY office wrote it and they would be upset about it" then yeah, that would suck. (Real story in a recent contract with a bank.)
