I work as a developer for a startup. I maintain a product (let’s call it P) which is an integration tool for 3 years now. The product has a considerable functional and technical dept:
Business side:
The product P has started as a prototype, not even an MVP. After several attempts to convince some tech companies to integrate it in their SAAS, we end up pivoting and changing its domain to become an annex tool for a known regional SAAS which is somehow a competitor of us.
This competitor partner is only interested in the clients we already have in our platform. In exchange, this partner which has a strong sales team will promote and sell my company’s other products.
Technical side:
We made a lot of hacks and shortcuts to support both the original domain and the partner’s requirements.
The original features of the product are not functionally nor technically matures enough and not used by clients. But my company for some strategic reasons doesn’t want to improve them nor to abandon them.
The P product doesn’t belong anymore to my company core business, it prefers to focus efforts on other products to rich its goals:
- I often do both dev and client support, and sometimes they ask me to get contact with the partner business side
- I often help other teams while mainly continuing to maintain the P partnership
- My company refuse to rewrite/refactor the P product (but we continue to refactor other products that belong to the core business)
I’m the only developer in the company who knows well the P product, and the only one who maintains it (among 1x devs) these last 2 years which is a long period.
I ask my company to delegate it to someone else, but it looks hard for it to take this decision, and it continues to take the risk (to keep one dev in this project)
The original idea behind the P product is technically very interesting but it seems that it doesn’t find its product-market fit. So the product can't rich a stable shape, and I still stuck within.
Is it common for a dev to risk his technical career if he takes/maintains a secondary project with a low budget/business-interest?
How can I gracefully quit the job in such a situation?