I've noticed this and I think it's an expression of a more general human urge to feel more important / significant than you really are. It's the same urge that

I've noticed this and I think it's an expression of a more general human urge to feel more important / significant than you really are. It's the same urge that makes us all think we're better drivers than average, better looking than average, etc. It's the urge that make people move to Silicon Valley/Hollywood/etc., because everyone's going to "make it" even though statistically, that isn't possible. It's why every parent with the means pays through the nose to get their kids into Harvard, why SUV sales are high even though most people don't off-road, and why people buy technical outerwear for climbing, etc. if they never go near a mountain. Everyone has a constructed image of themselves and we're lying if we say we don't try to burnish it. I think using all this tech is an expression of the desire for status. The problem is, it really can be a time-consuming, frustrating, customer-data-losing, unsupportable, waste of resources. That's bad for business, bad for your health (spending time fixing shit rather than eating well or going to the gym), and it can make your friends and family irritated with you, too. I'm building a product right now on the most boring stack possible: python, postgres, pyramid. I've been there/done that on the whole sharded-MongoDB-Redis-Memcache-900 machines-AWS-Docker-startup-ops nightmare-use all the things (we actually used every single thing in that list at my last job). It was unreliable, a huge pain in the ass, a little bit fun, but ultimately quite counterproductive. These days, my bets are on things like the JVM, the .NET CLR, and Postgres. As Knish from Rounders would say, "My kids eat". Another thing to keep in mind: a lot of this is resume padding. Yes, this is completely unprofessional, reckless behavior, but it happens, many recruiters are keyword-driven, and as interviewers many of us are impressed with a keyword-laden resume. We do this to ourselves as an industry in how we hire, who we let speak at events, and who we praise. It's nobody's fault but our own.