What's wrong with including software “maintenance” experience on your CV?

Question

When you write CV you usually want to include some essential thing about your current/previous job, right?

The was some problems the last time I went to an interview for programmer position.

I included a line in the what-I-do-in-my-last-job part like this:

Deliver X revenue report

They asked about it. I revealed there is a system in our company to send some mass mail semi-automatically to other parties. I didn't write that system, however, I use it and maintain it(True, I've dig into the code base for some changes). All in all, it occur to them that I just use this system rather than developing it. I've use the right word - deliver but not create. They kinda LOL in front of me.

If the experience of maintenance is not important, I wonder why it is humiliating to include it in the CV.

Answer 1

I think they laughed because "delivering" a report is a decidedly non-IT type task and they found your explanation amusing. I suspect that since you don't understand why it would have been funny, you explained it very dryly (see humor from Stephen Wright for reference). I don't think they meant to humiliate it by laughing, though as Oded notes in the comments, we were not there and don't have the context to be certain.

You ought to change your description of the task, however. While you did not design that particular element, you have had to maintain the code. "Maintained and updated code for revenue reporting." When asked about it, talk about the changes, minor though they seem to have been, that you made to the code.

It's not that maintenance programming is unimportant, it's that your CV doesn't describe your maintenance programming as maintenance, but more like pizza delivery. Most programming is about re-using, updating or maintaining code, not developing everything from scratch, so point to your maintenance programming with pride, not shame.