You get paid less than you deserve but still more than you would get in most other less profitable firms? No one wants to fire the guy who takes out the garbage every day, literally or metaphorically.

When times are tough the guy who does the most menial tasks gets fired first and replaced with someone cheaper.

The thing about being the guy who fixes software, is that no one will hear about it if you are doing a good job at it.

I don't buy it. That's not what I've seen.

If you're fixing software, you're either fixing your own bugs or someone else's bugs. There's bug tracking software; these metrics are visible. If you're fixing your own code, you're also adding functionality (presumably you wrote the code you're fixing). If you're helping to fix other people's code, they will notice. People talk.

I've personally seen almost an entire team disbanded, the work outsourced. The people kept? The guys who fixed things, who made sure it shipped at the end.

You can see bug fixes on a tracker sure. But how many lines of code is that going to be compared to a new feature or game?