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Red flag for outdated technology? That is hilarious. The IT world has already more work in maintenance than in greenfield projects and that will grow every day.

by oaiey 8y ago

Red flag for outdated technology? That is hilarious. The IT world has already more work in maintenance than in greenfield projects and that will grow every day. When that is a red flag, good luck finding work in future.

arcturus17 8y ago
There are technologies which are old but still relevant: Java, .Net, Python, etc. Others, like jQuery, might be in a much more precarious position. The point of the article is avoid these if you can.
- oaiey 8y ago
  Nevertheless, jQuery might support very vital business processes, saves the lifes of hundreds people a day (literally) or Incorporated in something which creates millions every second. The most crap but working technology might be in places which earn money.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    That's fine so long as they pay you accordingly to account for the career hazard. They probably won't.
    - olavgg 8y ago
      Using jQuery is not a career hazard, the web is html, css and javascript. I don't tell my clients that I do React, I tell them that I solve their business problems.
bartread 8y ago
This made me chuckle: "Companies advertising outdated stacks open you up to the risk of building the wrong sorts of skills, which can have far-reaching effects on your career." (Emphasis mine.) The wrong sort of skills? Like adaptability, strong diagnostic skills, pragmatism, self-awareness, and not being a massive diva all the time? Although it's true that these things can have a far-reaching effect on your career. Every company that's been around for a while has legacy code and you need to lose the fear of working with it. You also need to develop enough humility to realise that the code you're writing today is tomorrow's legacy.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  Just the ability to not constantly choose "throw it out and rewrite from scratch" is a fucking goldmine.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > The wrong sort of skills? Like adaptability, strong diagnostic skills, pragmatism, self-awareness, and not being a massive diva all the time? Yes, the wrong set of skills. If the market is looking for, say, React devs then you'd be a fool to accept a job where you are expected to work with, say, Delphi or AS400. Yes, maintenance jobs working on old established services are enough to make a living and even a profitable one, but let's not fool ourselves into believing that your odds of being the top candidate in today's or tomorrow's high-profile projects will be greater if you waste your time in outdated stacks.
  - catmanjan 8y ago
    Yep you're right as much as I wish it wasn't the case, if two candidates were identical except one had skills in cutting edge technology and the other had skills in older tech I would pick the newer May just be the business we're in but I feel going with the old limits your breadth (but maybe with a higher price tag? COBOL?)
    - marvin 8y ago
      You wouldn't choose a top-tier React & AWS dev if your veteran Cobol dev had just died of old age and your business-critical Cobol & SAP monstrosity needs urgent changes to handle this years's tax compliance updates. In that situation, you'll pay the $20000/week or whatever oaiey quotes you. All right, so maybe you feel bad now about not listening to the engineering team and maintaining a continuous migration of your business-critical code to modern platforms over the last 30 years. But that's all in the past and your million-dollar business will be shuttered by the tax authorities in three months if you don't get this sorted out right now. Maybe we'll have a world one day where everyone knows the "obvious" fact of technology leadership that everything should be continuously migrated to the state of the art. But maybe we won't, and maybe this fact isn't obvious at all, or even correct. Who knows? In the meantime, people with skills that have an extreme demand/supply factor can command the highest rates, even if they won't be hired at tomorrow's startup. That's not to say it's a bad idea to learn current skills (for diversification), and definitely say no to working with legacy tech for small money, but that's really an orthogonal point to the one oaiey was making.
kokokokoko 8y ago
If you work in web technologies, you can absolutely damage your career prospects by spending 3+ years in legacy technology. I've seen many many of my peers fall behind thinking that way and are now working in roles related to, but not directly involved in software development. That is just the reality of the web if you live in a high wage country. There is very little legacy work in web technology that is not outsourced.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  What are you thinking of as "legacy technology" though? I know web developers who would put Angular(1) in that category, for instance.
  - lwansbrough 8y ago
    If I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast on the day the code was written, it’s legacy. /s
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    Angular 1 absolutely is legacy code. My current task is removing all the angular code from our app because the last security test flagged it as a severe issue due to out dated libraries.
    - lazyasciiart 8y ago
      Yea - so, three years working on angular 1 starting today won't end your career.
      - wccrawford 8y ago
        They didn't say "end your career". They said "damage your career".
        AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        But the task is to remove the Angular and replace it with something current. List the job on your resume under "something current" rather than Angular, and you're good.
tomlock 8y ago
My last contract was both 60 days and involved working on a VB6 application that hadn't had a commit to the codebase for 14 years - and honestly, if that company offered me a full time role I'd seriously consider it. Working for a short time on an outdated technology is not necessarily a red flag.
adrianN 8y ago
Until jobs doing maintenance pay as well or better and have better career prospects than jobs doing greenfield development, the rational choice is to avoid jobs where you don't get to use the latest fad technology. Being the greybeard that keeps the legacy stuff running is an honorable position, but these people usually have a hard time keeping their jobs when the legacy tech is finally replaced.
- halfnibble 8y ago
  My understanding is that COBOL is paying a lot right now.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Some niches are of course different from the mainstream, but spending five years maintaining a VB6 application is unlikely to further your career a lot.
    - AstralStorm 8y ago
      More than being an inexperienced programmer with shiny keywords. An experienced programmer with all the shiny keywords is rare.
  - dagw 8y ago
    Maybe as if you're one of the very best COBOL programmers around and work as a consultant. However, anecdotally, working a normal 9-5 COBOL programming job at a bank or insurance company doesn't pay well at all.
- toadi 8y ago
  All your banking transactions run over old mainframes using COBOL. Probably on systems maintained for 20 years. They will not even be replaced as most already have tried this and not succeeded. I know of companies training COBOL developers to make sure they can maintain these legacy systems. Mostly they are also the mission critical systems. The web applications at these financial institutions will be in more modern crappy frameworks. But rest assured the expert COBOL developer gets paid much more for doing a lot less :)
angarg12 8y ago
Empires are built on top of old, ugly, or niche technologies. You might have more job opportunities with the latest and hottest tech, but you will have far less competition with legacy ones. And you can have a long and successful career with them. If anything I would consider a red flag to have proprietary or in-house stacks. Those could damage your career by employer lock-in, where your build expertise in tech only used in that company, thus reducing your marketability.

by oaiey 8y ago

arcturus17 8y ago

There are technologies which are old but still relevant: Java, .Net, Python, etc. Others, like jQuery, might be in a much more precarious position. The point of the article is avoid these if you can.

oaiey 8y ago
Nevertheless, jQuery might support very vital business processes, saves the lifes of hundreds people a day (literally) or Incorporated in something which creates millions every second. The most crap but working technology might be in places which earn money.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  That's fine so long as they pay you accordingly to account for the career hazard. They probably won't.
  - olavgg 8y ago
    Using jQuery is not a career hazard, the web is html, css and javascript. I don't tell my clients that I do React, I tell them that I solve their business problems.

bartread 8y ago

This made me chuckle: "Companies advertising outdated stacks open you up to the risk of building the wrong sorts of skills, which can have far-reaching effects on your career." (Emphasis mine.) The wrong sort of skills? Like adaptability, strong diagnostic skills, pragmatism, self-awareness, and not being a massive diva all the time? Although it's true that these things can have a far-reaching effect on your career. Every company that's been around for a while has legacy code and you need to lose the fear of working with it. You also need to develop enough humility to realise that the code you're writing today is tomorrow's legacy.

lazyasciiart 8y ago
Just the ability to not constantly choose "throw it out and rewrite from scratch" is a fucking goldmine.
geezerjay 8y ago
> The wrong sort of skills? Like adaptability, strong diagnostic skills, pragmatism, self-awareness, and not being a massive diva all the time? Yes, the wrong set of skills. If the market is looking for, say, React devs then you'd be a fool to accept a job where you are expected to work with, say, Delphi or AS400. Yes, maintenance jobs working on old established services are enough to make a living and even a profitable one, but let's not fool ourselves into believing that your odds of being the top candidate in today's or tomorrow's high-profile projects will be greater if you waste your time in outdated stacks.
- catmanjan 8y ago
  Yep you're right as much as I wish it wasn't the case, if two candidates were identical except one had skills in cutting edge technology and the other had skills in older tech I would pick the newer May just be the business we're in but I feel going with the old limits your breadth (but maybe with a higher price tag? COBOL?)
  - marvin 8y ago
    You wouldn't choose a top-tier React & AWS dev if your veteran Cobol dev had just died of old age and your business-critical Cobol & SAP monstrosity needs urgent changes to handle this years's tax compliance updates. In that situation, you'll pay the $20000/week or whatever oaiey quotes you. All right, so maybe you feel bad now about not listening to the engineering team and maintaining a continuous migration of your business-critical code to modern platforms over the last 30 years. But that's all in the past and your million-dollar business will be shuttered by the tax authorities in three months if you don't get this sorted out right now. Maybe we'll have a world one day where everyone knows the "obvious" fact of technology leadership that everything should be continuously migrated to the state of the art. But maybe we won't, and maybe this fact isn't obvious at all, or even correct. Who knows? In the meantime, people with skills that have an extreme demand/supply factor can command the highest rates, even if they won't be hired at tomorrow's startup. That's not to say it's a bad idea to learn current skills (for diversification), and definitely say no to working with legacy tech for small money, but that's really an orthogonal point to the one oaiey was making.

kokokokoko 8y ago

If you work in web technologies, you can absolutely damage your career prospects by spending 3+ years in legacy technology. I've seen many many of my peers fall behind thinking that way and are now working in roles related to, but not directly involved in software development. That is just the reality of the web if you live in a high wage country. There is very little legacy work in web technology that is not outsourced.

lazyasciiart 8y ago
What are you thinking of as "legacy technology" though? I know web developers who would put Angular(1) in that category, for instance.
- lwansbrough 8y ago
  If I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast on the day the code was written, it’s legacy. /s
- baroffoos 8y ago
  Angular 1 absolutely is legacy code. My current task is removing all the angular code from our app because the last security test flagged it as a severe issue due to out dated libraries.
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    Yea - so, three years working on angular 1 starting today won't end your career.
    - wccrawford 8y ago
      They didn't say "end your career". They said "damage your career".
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        But the task is to remove the Angular and replace it with something current. List the job on your resume under "something current" rather than Angular, and you're good.

tomlock 8y ago

My last contract was both 60 days and involved working on a VB6 application that hadn't had a commit to the codebase for 14 years - and honestly, if that company offered me a full time role I'd seriously consider it. Working for a short time on an outdated technology is not necessarily a red flag.

adrianN 8y ago

Until jobs doing maintenance pay as well or better and have better career prospects than jobs doing greenfield development, the rational choice is to avoid jobs where you don't get to use the latest fad technology. Being the greybeard that keeps the legacy stuff running is an honorable position, but these people usually have a hard time keeping their jobs when the legacy tech is finally replaced.

halfnibble 8y ago
My understanding is that COBOL is paying a lot right now.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Some niches are of course different from the mainstream, but spending five years maintaining a VB6 application is unlikely to further your career a lot.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    More than being an inexperienced programmer with shiny keywords. An experienced programmer with all the shiny keywords is rare.
- dagw 8y ago
  Maybe as if you're one of the very best COBOL programmers around and work as a consultant. However, anecdotally, working a normal 9-5 COBOL programming job at a bank or insurance company doesn't pay well at all.
toadi 8y ago
All your banking transactions run over old mainframes using COBOL. Probably on systems maintained for 20 years. They will not even be replaced as most already have tried this and not succeeded. I know of companies training COBOL developers to make sure they can maintain these legacy systems. Mostly they are also the mission critical systems. The web applications at these financial institutions will be in more modern crappy frameworks. But rest assured the expert COBOL developer gets paid much more for doing a lot less :)

angarg12 8y ago

Empires are built on top of old, ugly, or niche technologies. You might have more job opportunities with the latest and hottest tech, but you will have far less competition with legacy ones. And you can have a long and successful career with them. If anything I would consider a red flag to have proprietary or in-house stacks. Those could damage your career by employer lock-in, where your build expertise in tech only used in that company, thus reducing your marketability.