Curious to see if anyone else is in this situation: I somehow have become the “infrastructure upgrade guy”. I’m in this constant loop of retrofitting our applications to work with the latest Windows Version or Java Middleware. Or, I’m stuck porting apps from one middleware to another. I guess I got good at this, and now I’m stuck in this constant loop of being the “go to” for all system upgrades/ports, which seem to just be in this endless cycle. It gets me a lot of recognition, but the work is miserable. Anyone else experience something like this, and if so, how did you get out?

I switched jobs.

Not this specifically, but after being in one particular place for a while I just became the "go to" guy for everything. Need credentials? Don't bother looking them up, go to Almond? Customer asking tricky questions? Almond must have dealt with them, get him to sort them out. Need an upgrade to a core OS / key package veresion? Ah, Almond knows the process, let him handle it.

The problem is it becomes insanely difficult to break that cycle. Higher ups had every *intention* of pulling me out of it and getting me back onto proper dev work, but all the while you're there it always becomes "just one more thing..." - then it quickly slips back to you handling all the crap again.

I can relate with that...
Switching jobs is an option on the table!