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My working theory about this is that the industry is driven by resume-driven development. Recruiters filter resumes with a keyword based search : 'Do you have R

My working theory about this is that the industry is driven by resume-driven development. Recruiters filter resumes with a keyword based search : 'Do you have React experience ?', 'What about docker ?', 'Do you do Ruby on Rails ?'. If you cannot show experience in the current hotness, your chances in the job market diminishes. So people pick up the new hotness and implement their next solution with that technology whether or not it is the right tool for the job. If we fix the job market, this problem might automatically disappear. Another solution could be encouraging personal projects. Many companies over-work their employees to the point that they cannot do anything in their spare time. Give employees free time and encourage them to play with new technology in their personal projects. The curious ones will have an outlet to channel their energies and you will get a rock solid stack. Also, they will be knowledgeable to take you forward when a problem that requires their newfound knowledge arises in your organization.

ianai 10y ago
The overwork thing has to be culture. I'm sure they think they're cost minimizing, but I doubt adding the additional labor costs more than the additional time of the current staff doing it all alone and being stressed out and so on. The "stressed out and so on" adds up to negatives that your company will pay out.
- lmm 10y ago
  Remember that managers too respond to incentives. People working 9-5 are probably more productive than those doing 12 hour days, but which is more likely to keep the VC money flowing?
  - Clubber 10y ago
    Also, most managers won't act on anything they can't measure directly.
    - ianai 10y ago
      It definitely factors into employee turnover rates. That is probably also where employees hurt themselves. People don't like looking for work and for good reason.
tapan_k 10y ago
> Another solution could be encouraging personal projects. Agree. This is necessary to encourage learning, which helps keep people sharp, which in turn benefits the projects that they are working on in the day job. Even if the technology is the "same old". A couple of decades ago, many software developers were content using the tools they had and knew. Few demonstrated the eagerness and openness to try something new. These few were also the ones who were better at coming up with out of the box solutions because they were willing to try something new -- both tools and/or approaches. Now, we have reached a point where the bare minimum required of a software developer is familiarity and comfort with the new and shiny, leading to the reverse problem we had early on. Now, people can spend way too much time and energy learning and trying out new tech that they miss out on the opportunity of staying long enough with a technology to learn from experience. In other words, today we spend way too much time on accidental complexity than on essential complexity.
- jalfresi 10y ago
  "..today we spend way too much time on accidental complexity than on essential complexity" This. So much this!
- clifanatic 10y ago
  > encourage learning Hell, I'd settle for just not discouraging it so damned hard.
cookiecaper 10y ago
The root cause of writing unnecessary code is the way the work day and compensatory systems of the modern workplace are structured. Employed software and infrastructure engineers are not paid to just drop in the simplest, most appropriate solution, do the minor customizations/reconfigurations that may be needed, and get out. They're paid to be in butt-in-chair for at least 8 hours per day, and the presumption is that they're engineering that whole time. In reality, places often must make up tasks to keep their employees busy, and using the most efficient solution is disincentivized, because you have to say you're doing something for those 8 hours. I think the fact that we have the white-collar workforce organized after the assembly line pattern is the primary cause of unnecessary, borderline intentional complication, which includes mixing in unstable/untested components. If we could find a way to compensate engineers fairly without monopolizing their time, we'd be much better off, because the need to continually invent additional work for oneself would go away. The bliss of a stable, low-maintenance project can be had through side projects, which often work fine for years with minimal modifications. It's really rewarding to go back to the same utility that you've written and know that the comparatively little quantity of time you spent on it is still paying dividends years later. There's an awesome sense of pride attached to that.
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  In reality, places often must make up tasks to keep their employees busy, and using the most efficient solution is disincentivized, because you have to say you're doing something for those 8 hours. This does not match my experience. Slow times are for experimenting with things and catching up on less-urgent tasks.
  - clifanatic 10y ago
    > Slow times are for experimenting with things You've led a charmed life. In my 25 years in this business, I've found that very little induces the same level of panic in management as "experimenting" with something, especially something that you can't put a solid "business case" behind and "estimate" down to the nearest half hour.
    - 10y ago
walshemj 10y ago
I saw this at one large uk Telco Some one was going for a promotion so they spent a year and a team of 15 people to redevelop an existing perl system into an oracle based one as oracle was the company standard. one of the markers for promotion was manage a team of x size and a > 1million budget - so they where gaming the system not the best use of the share holders money
amasad 10y ago
Almost half of my time in the past few months have gone into interviewing and hiring and I approached the subject with a complete beginners mindset and tinkered to see what works. Much to my chagrin turns out there is a positive selection effect to filter candidates by resumes based on hot tech. Maybe the smart ones know this increases there employability? Maybe they are naturally more curious? Who knows, it just seem to be a good signal.
- ones_and_zeros 10y ago
  > hot tech your bias is showing. I'm not sure what you consider hot tech but I can assure you whatever it is it is based on tech that has been around for ages and has just been rebranded. I find that people that hop from "hot tech" to "hot tech" don't ever build up a depth of knowledge and understanding to tackle hard problems in an elegant way. It is essentially a major contributor to the 1 year of experience repeated 10 times phenomena.
  - amasad 10y ago
    >I find that people that hop from "hot tech" to "hot tech" don't ever build up a depth of knowledge and understanding to tackle hard problems in an elegant way You immediately assumed that the folks I found are just jumping from tech to tech without building anything substantial. Which is probably also bias, just an opposite of mine. You also assumed that I didn't vet them or test them on "elegant solutions". Maybe your heuristic worked for you. But this heuristic, in my current situation is thus far working for me.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rak00n 10y ago
    Tackling hard problem is often so much social endeavor than the effort to solve it. You have to convince everyone the solution works despite all the bias they might have. Maybe that's why many of the major changes you see in tech, like Linux, Git, Vim or Redis started as a single person's work rather than a clever corporate product.
lucozade 10y ago
> Recruiters filter resumes with a keyword based search Although true, this is is somewhat shooting the messenger. If as a client of the recruiter I ask for COBOL developers and all I get are Clojure resumes because the recruiter thinks it's cooler, then the recruiter won't be my recruiter for very long. Surely where there's an issue it's that the recruiters are being asked for developers with those attributes. They're presumably being asked because the employer, for good or ill is seeking developers with those attributes. Now, I've personally seen 4 reasons for hiring devs with cutting edge knowledge: because it's cool, because it's the only way to attract good talent, because we checked and we absolutely need that technology and because we run a research lab looking into cutting edge tech we may or may not use. The latter two are very good reasons to seek hotness. They're also the least likely to be the reason, in my experience. Using shiny, shiny to attract talent is often a successful approach. And who doesn't like cool stuff (though it's a terrible justification)?
- sounds 10y ago
  It has been suggested several times on HN that another reason is that it attracts younger coders. Younger coders tend to be more willing to just follow the lead of the management, rather than ask "is this really going to solve the problem?" Younger coders will put in massively more hours -- this may result in problems like reinventing the wheel, piles of garbage code, etc. -- but it generally "feels good" to be the manager with an energetic, 24-hour around the clock team of young coders. Younger coders can be paid less, and are willing to forego benefits, stability, medical plans, or even pay sometimes.
user5994461 10y ago
It's worth noting that the buzzword-keyword-madness is driven by web stuff, and amplified to an extreme the more a job is web and/or frontend related. If you don't work in that field, you're fine :D

ianai 10y ago

The overwork thing has to be culture. I'm sure they think they're cost minimizing, but I doubt adding the additional labor costs more than the additional time of the current staff doing it all alone and being stressed out and so on. The "stressed out and so on" adds up to negatives that your company will pay out.

lmm 10y ago
Remember that managers too respond to incentives. People working 9-5 are probably more productive than those doing 12 hour days, but which is more likely to keep the VC money flowing?
- Clubber 10y ago
  Also, most managers won't act on anything they can't measure directly.
  - ianai 10y ago
    It definitely factors into employee turnover rates. That is probably also where employees hurt themselves. People don't like looking for work and for good reason.

tapan_k 10y ago

> Another solution could be encouraging personal projects. Agree. This is necessary to encourage learning, which helps keep people sharp, which in turn benefits the projects that they are working on in the day job. Even if the technology is the "same old". A couple of decades ago, many software developers were content using the tools they had and knew. Few demonstrated the eagerness and openness to try something new. These few were also the ones who were better at coming up with out of the box solutions because they were willing to try something new -- both tools and/or approaches. Now, we have reached a point where the bare minimum required of a software developer is familiarity and comfort with the new and shiny, leading to the reverse problem we had early on. Now, people can spend way too much time and energy learning and trying out new tech that they miss out on the opportunity of staying long enough with a technology to learn from experience. In other words, today we spend way too much time on accidental complexity than on essential complexity.

jalfresi 10y ago
"..today we spend way too much time on accidental complexity than on essential complexity" This. So much this!
clifanatic 10y ago
> encourage learning Hell, I'd settle for just not discouraging it so damned hard.

cookiecaper 10y ago

The root cause of writing unnecessary code is the way the work day and compensatory systems of the modern workplace are structured. Employed software and infrastructure engineers are not paid to just drop in the simplest, most appropriate solution, do the minor customizations/reconfigurations that may be needed, and get out. They're paid to be in butt-in-chair for at least 8 hours per day, and the presumption is that they're engineering that whole time. In reality, places often must make up tasks to keep their employees busy, and using the most efficient solution is disincentivized, because you have to say you're doing something for those 8 hours. I think the fact that we have the white-collar workforce organized after the assembly line pattern is the primary cause of unnecessary, borderline intentional complication, which includes mixing in unstable/untested components. If we could find a way to compensate engineers fairly without monopolizing their time, we'd be much better off, because the need to continually invent additional work for oneself would go away. The bliss of a stable, low-maintenance project can be had through side projects, which often work fine for years with minimal modifications. It's really rewarding to go back to the same utility that you've written and know that the comparatively little quantity of time you spent on it is still paying dividends years later. There's an awesome sense of pride attached to that.

tbrownaw 10y ago
In reality, places often must make up tasks to keep their employees busy, and using the most efficient solution is disincentivized, because you have to say you're doing something for those 8 hours. This does not match my experience. Slow times are for experimenting with things and catching up on less-urgent tasks.
- clifanatic 10y ago
  > Slow times are for experimenting with things You've led a charmed life. In my 25 years in this business, I've found that very little induces the same level of panic in management as "experimenting" with something, especially something that you can't put a solid "business case" behind and "estimate" down to the nearest half hour.
  - 10y ago

walshemj 10y ago

I saw this at one large uk Telco Some one was going for a promotion so they spent a year and a team of 15 people to redevelop an existing perl system into an oracle based one as oracle was the company standard. one of the markers for promotion was manage a team of x size and a > 1million budget - so they where gaming the system not the best use of the share holders money

amasad 10y ago

Almost half of my time in the past few months have gone into interviewing and hiring and I approached the subject with a complete beginners mindset and tinkered to see what works. Much to my chagrin turns out there is a positive selection effect to filter candidates by resumes based on hot tech. Maybe the smart ones know this increases there employability? Maybe they are naturally more curious? Who knows, it just seem to be a good signal.

ones_and_zeros 10y ago
> hot tech your bias is showing. I'm not sure what you consider hot tech but I can assure you whatever it is it is based on tech that has been around for ages and has just been rebranded. I find that people that hop from "hot tech" to "hot tech" don't ever build up a depth of knowledge and understanding to tackle hard problems in an elegant way. It is essentially a major contributor to the 1 year of experience repeated 10 times phenomena.
- amasad 10y ago
  >I find that people that hop from "hot tech" to "hot tech" don't ever build up a depth of knowledge and understanding to tackle hard problems in an elegant way You immediately assumed that the folks I found are just jumping from tech to tech without building anything substantial. Which is probably also bias, just an opposite of mine. You also assumed that I didn't vet them or test them on "elegant solutions". Maybe your heuristic worked for you. But this heuristic, in my current situation is thus far working for me.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rak00n 10y ago
  Tackling hard problem is often so much social endeavor than the effort to solve it. You have to convince everyone the solution works despite all the bias they might have. Maybe that's why many of the major changes you see in tech, like Linux, Git, Vim or Redis started as a single person's work rather than a clever corporate product.

lucozade 10y ago

> Recruiters filter resumes with a keyword based search Although true, this is is somewhat shooting the messenger. If as a client of the recruiter I ask for COBOL developers and all I get are Clojure resumes because the recruiter thinks it's cooler, then the recruiter won't be my recruiter for very long. Surely where there's an issue it's that the recruiters are being asked for developers with those attributes. They're presumably being asked because the employer, for good or ill is seeking developers with those attributes. Now, I've personally seen 4 reasons for hiring devs with cutting edge knowledge: because it's cool, because it's the only way to attract good talent, because we checked and we absolutely need that technology and because we run a research lab looking into cutting edge tech we may or may not use. The latter two are very good reasons to seek hotness. They're also the least likely to be the reason, in my experience. Using shiny, shiny to attract talent is often a successful approach. And who doesn't like cool stuff (though it's a terrible justification)?

sounds 10y ago
It has been suggested several times on HN that another reason is that it attracts younger coders. Younger coders tend to be more willing to just follow the lead of the management, rather than ask "is this really going to solve the problem?" Younger coders will put in massively more hours -- this may result in problems like reinventing the wheel, piles of garbage code, etc. -- but it generally "feels good" to be the manager with an energetic, 24-hour around the clock team of young coders. Younger coders can be paid less, and are willing to forego benefits, stability, medical plans, or even pay sometimes.

user5994461 10y ago

It's worth noting that the buzzword-keyword-madness is driven by web stuff, and amplified to an extreme the more a job is web and/or frontend related. If you don't work in that field, you're fine :D