4 ms·

It's even dumber than contemporary identity politics, because at least there you (usually) can't choose your identity and so there's a defensible case for firin

It's even dumber than contemporary identity politics, because at least there you (usually) can't choose your identity and so there's a defensible case for firing back at people who try to make your life miserable because of it. But language/platform/framework fanboyism is just pure sunk cost fallacy: you spent a lot of time learning X, but if X was the "wrong" choice, then was all that time wasted? To avoid that outcome, people invest tons of emotional energy defending X.

rpeden 9y ago
I think part of the problem is that much of the job market is language/platform/framework oriented. So there's some value in defending the tools you know and use, because your value on the labor market depends on the market valuing your experience. It seems like this is a bad approach to hiring, and I push back against it whenever I'm in the hiring decision loop any way. In the past, when the company I was at was looking for someone who would be working mainly with .NET, I wouldn't hesitate to being a strong advocate for a great candidate who has really only worked with Java. In my experience, such a candidate would take a week or two to really get up to speed and sort out the differences between the two ecosystems. I'd have been just as strong an advocate for good candidates whose main experience was Python, or Ruby, or Node, or Haskell, or anything. I don't think I ever saw any of those, though. The company was using a recruitment agency to bring in candidates, and so we mostly ended up seeing people who fit a pretty specific archetype. And I don't think that led to us seeing the best candidates who might have been interested in us. Not that we didn't find some great people; we most certainly did. But we also found an awesome one via a post on an HN "Who's hiring" thread.
Yhippa 9y ago
> But language/platform/framework fanboyism is just pure sunk cost fallacy: you spent a lot of time learning X, but if X was the "wrong" choice, then was all that time wasted? A lot of these articles give me this vibe. So what if a competing technology is "bad". What does the author get out of saying "X technology is the best and Y is fail"? Are these guys now thought leaders? Also I tend to see these more often in front-end land. Not sure why. Possibly because the cost of switching technologies is so low that you need to convince people constantly that X is the best so they stick around.
- omginternets 9y ago
  >A lot of these articles give me this vibe. So what if a competing technology is "bad". What does the author get out of saying "X technology is the best and Y is fail"? Are these guys now thought leaders? I think it has something to do with signaling expertise, often for purposes of self-branding.
- thehardsphere 9y ago
  I have a hypothesis about this: The lower your skill is at software development (or some subset of it), the more likely you are to be strongly opinionated about these kinds of arguments. If you are highly skilled, you're far less likely to be married to any one bit of technology, even if you have prior preferences. You're also likely to have been through a few fad cycles before, so you probably learned to tune out the holy wars and focus on being productive. And if some stack X is really a giant turd, you should be able to figure that out quickly and avoid it, so you don't have a reason to write about how much it sucks. On the other hand, if you know next to nothing, you're going to be more likely to read "Don't ever use X!" stories because you don't know what to use and are looking for advice. And you may be more dependent on whatever things you do use, because you don't yet know many other things, and you may be more likely to believe that it's better for your career to establish yourself as an expert in whatever you know. I think the "front-end land" sees more of these now because front-end land is a new and bizzare place that only came into being a few years ago; people generally don't understand it as well as they do other things.
omginternets 9y ago
>there you (usually) can't choose your identity The whole premise of identity politics is that you are the sole arbiter of your identity. It's an extension of the post-modern idea that since there is no possible way to favor a given interpretation of the state of the world over another, the only humane course of action is to let the people most immediately concerned by the interpretation set the standard. As such, the individual is given full dominion over his identity. So no, it's equivalent in this respect. (N.B.: the post-modernist could reply to my comment with something equivalent to 'that's just like your opinion, man', thereby illustrating why this reasoning gets us nowhere useful)
- thehardsphere 9y ago
  It depends on what the parent was referring to by "identity politics." Some people use that term to mean politics according to demographic factors they cannot directly control, such as their race. So, if it was what was intended, then I don't think your (actually quite excellent) critique of post-modernism is relevant to what they were talking about. Unless of course, you're arguing that it's the underlying philosphy even if the participants in it don't know it or think that way consciously.

rpeden 9y ago

I think part of the problem is that much of the job market is language/platform/framework oriented. So there's some value in defending the tools you know and use, because your value on the labor market depends on the market valuing your experience. It seems like this is a bad approach to hiring, and I push back against it whenever I'm in the hiring decision loop any way. In the past, when the company I was at was looking for someone who would be working mainly with .NET, I wouldn't hesitate to being a strong advocate for a great candidate who has really only worked with Java. In my experience, such a candidate would take a week or two to really get up to speed and sort out the differences between the two ecosystems. I'd have been just as strong an advocate for good candidates whose main experience was Python, or Ruby, or Node, or Haskell, or anything. I don't think I ever saw any of those, though. The company was using a recruitment agency to bring in candidates, and so we mostly ended up seeing people who fit a pretty specific archetype. And I don't think that led to us seeing the best candidates who might have been interested in us. Not that we didn't find some great people; we most certainly did. But we also found an awesome one via a post on an HN "Who's hiring" thread.

Yhippa 9y ago

> But language/platform/framework fanboyism is just pure sunk cost fallacy: you spent a lot of time learning X, but if X was the "wrong" choice, then was all that time wasted? A lot of these articles give me this vibe. So what if a competing technology is "bad". What does the author get out of saying "X technology is the best and Y is fail"? Are these guys now thought leaders? Also I tend to see these more often in front-end land. Not sure why. Possibly because the cost of switching technologies is so low that you need to convince people constantly that X is the best so they stick around.

omginternets 9y ago
>A lot of these articles give me this vibe. So what if a competing technology is "bad". What does the author get out of saying "X technology is the best and Y is fail"? Are these guys now thought leaders? I think it has something to do with signaling expertise, often for purposes of self-branding.
thehardsphere 9y ago
I have a hypothesis about this: The lower your skill is at software development (or some subset of it), the more likely you are to be strongly opinionated about these kinds of arguments. If you are highly skilled, you're far less likely to be married to any one bit of technology, even if you have prior preferences. You're also likely to have been through a few fad cycles before, so you probably learned to tune out the holy wars and focus on being productive. And if some stack X is really a giant turd, you should be able to figure that out quickly and avoid it, so you don't have a reason to write about how much it sucks. On the other hand, if you know next to nothing, you're going to be more likely to read "Don't ever use X!" stories because you don't know what to use and are looking for advice. And you may be more dependent on whatever things you do use, because you don't yet know many other things, and you may be more likely to believe that it's better for your career to establish yourself as an expert in whatever you know. I think the "front-end land" sees more of these now because front-end land is a new and bizzare place that only came into being a few years ago; people generally don't understand it as well as they do other things.

omginternets 9y ago

>there you (usually) can't choose your identity The whole premise of identity politics is that you are the sole arbiter of your identity. It's an extension of the post-modern idea that since there is no possible way to favor a given interpretation of the state of the world over another, the only humane course of action is to let the people most immediately concerned by the interpretation set the standard. As such, the individual is given full dominion over his identity. So no, it's equivalent in this respect. (N.B.: the post-modernist could reply to my comment with something equivalent to 'that's just like your opinion, man', thereby illustrating why this reasoning gets us nowhere useful)

thehardsphere 9y ago
It depends on what the parent was referring to by "identity politics." Some people use that term to mean politics according to demographic factors they cannot directly control, such as their race. So, if it was what was intended, then I don't think your (actually quite excellent) critique of post-modernism is relevant to what they were talking about. Unless of course, you're arguing that it's the underlying philosphy even if the participants in it don't know it or think that way consciously.