Ask HN:Is fixing real complex bugs worth less than shipping shiny new features?

I joined my company at a stage where they just had a major release, so I was tasked with fixing bugs in the existing system. I was pretty good at tackling complex bugs that nobody else could, so the more bugs I fixed the more bugs I got assigned. I also worked with real customers who reported those bugs, and made sure the fixes got to them

After a while, new people joined the team, and some got to work on some new projects with some cool new features.

A couple years later, those working on new stuff got promoted faster and supposedly bigger raises.

They worked very little on the legacy code, if at all. They just implement new stuff, and ship, and get rewarded, even if nobody is really using what they implemented. Because nobody uses it, very little bugs are reported, so they can easily go on to the next cool new stuff. They have more visibility even though their work might not be that hard or valuable.

It seems this is the way things are, at least in my company. I wonder how things are in other places in the software industry? Is support/maintenance and keeping customers satisfied deemed less worthy and less valuable than shipping new features?