28 ms·

> I used to be the outsider asking the big companies, and their silence would drive me nuts. Do they not know about this technology? Why wouldn't they use it?..

> I used to be the outsider asking the big companies, and their silence would drive me nuts. Do they not know about this technology? Why wouldn't they use it?...I finally get it now having seen it from the other side. They are usually well aware of various technologies but have reasons not to use them which they usually won't share. I can't speak for the OP, but this insight often just comes with experience and rarely needs seeing it "from the other side". With some exceptions, the reality is that most technologies aren't introducing a new class of tool. They're not contributing a wrench to a world that had only seen hammers and screwdrivers, let alone a power drill or industrial crane. The innovations they contribute are more incremental than a lot of early-career developers realize: they're a wrench with a more ergonomic handle, or a hammer with a claw on the back. They're a power drill with a simpler way to change bits. If your organization already knows how to do its job with some other style of wrench or hammer or power drill, there are many reasons you might pick some new one, but few reasons you should pick any particular one at any particular time. Articulating an answer to "buy why not?" is usually just an exercise you perform for the benefit of juniors, outsiders, marketers, evangelists and people who happened to be used to that tool already.

RealityVoid 5y ago
But, sometimes, a lot of times... It's just "the way we do things here". Some companies really are insulated from outside inovation.
- alar44 5y ago
  That and sometimes the connectedness of their tools means that switching to some new technology means opening a massive can of worms. I've moved my company over to M365 but we are going to continue to use Slack rather than Teams due to the sheer amount of bots and integration we have set up in Slack. It's just not worth the time to re-engineer for the marginal benefit.
  - bjelkeman-again 5y ago
    That feels like you dodged a bullet based on how I experience using Teams vs Slack.
    - alar44 5y ago
      I disagree completely. If you're bought into the M365 ecosystem, Teams is fantastic, everything is in one spot.
      - ufmace 5y ago
        Never used Teams myself, but this sounds more plausible to me. MS stuff mostly works fine, but you need to buy into the ecosystem fully. Usually Unix people try a few MS things, try to use it just like their Unix things, and bash it because it's not exactly the same.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > Teams is fantastic, everything is in one spot. But that can be a downside for finding stuff. If everything is in one spot, each time you're looking for something you may have to look through everything. If everything is split up over X spots, you usually only have to look through 1 / X amount of stuff in the spot you're searching.
        RealityVoid 5y ago
        I just want to say I kind of hate Teams but I am not convinced by this argument. Google has the whole internet for example, but it's relatively easy to find things. And segmenting a search space in X spots is easy, so you can get the same effect in just 1 place.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        > Google has the whole internet for example, but it's relatively easy to find things. Used to be; not so much any more.
        alar44 5y ago
henning 5y ago
Yes, especially if your entire universe of possible choices are almost identical to what you use now, by definition, everything under consideration offers no new ideas. Anything with actual new ideas is automatically excluded without consideration. This lets old farts talk about "picking the right tool for the job" and not realize how incredibly narrow-minded and intellectually dishonest they are.
- makapuf 5y ago
  Well often the really old timers ( still in tech, so survivor bits here) have seen several waves of tech and know some qualities can withstand the test of time, and other fads will not. And having seen the previous fad come and go, they often are less attached to it than the ones that grew with only it, accepting some of the real benefits of the new tech.
totaldex 5y ago
These effectively boil down to ROI - it's tricky to quantify what return a tool will give, but its even harder to quantify the cost of switching over. At a big enough company, most will shudder at the thought of a massive migration without an equally passive payoff.
- FastMonkey 5y ago
  A payoff has to happen over years too. Sure you optimally ignore sunk costs when looking at a given project, but if you keep ditching solutions 2 years into a 3-year payoff you're going to lose a bunch of money.

RealityVoid 5y ago

But, sometimes, a lot of times... It's just "the way we do things here". Some companies really are insulated from outside inovation.

alar44 5y ago
That and sometimes the connectedness of their tools means that switching to some new technology means opening a massive can of worms. I've moved my company over to M365 but we are going to continue to use Slack rather than Teams due to the sheer amount of bots and integration we have set up in Slack. It's just not worth the time to re-engineer for the marginal benefit.
- bjelkeman-again 5y ago
  That feels like you dodged a bullet based on how I experience using Teams vs Slack.
  - alar44 5y ago
    I disagree completely. If you're bought into the M365 ecosystem, Teams is fantastic, everything is in one spot.
    - ufmace 5y ago
      Never used Teams myself, but this sounds more plausible to me. MS stuff mostly works fine, but you need to buy into the ecosystem fully. Usually Unix people try a few MS things, try to use it just like their Unix things, and bash it because it's not exactly the same.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > Teams is fantastic, everything is in one spot. But that can be a downside for finding stuff. If everything is in one spot, each time you're looking for something you may have to look through everything. If everything is split up over X spots, you usually only have to look through 1 / X amount of stuff in the spot you're searching.
      - RealityVoid 5y ago
        I just want to say I kind of hate Teams but I am not convinced by this argument. Google has the whole internet for example, but it's relatively easy to find things. And segmenting a search space in X spots is easy, so you can get the same effect in just 1 place.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        > Google has the whole internet for example, but it's relatively easy to find things. Used to be; not so much any more.
      - alar44 5y ago

henning 5y ago

Yes, especially if your entire universe of possible choices are almost identical to what you use now, by definition, everything under consideration offers no new ideas. Anything with actual new ideas is automatically excluded without consideration. This lets old farts talk about "picking the right tool for the job" and not realize how incredibly narrow-minded and intellectually dishonest they are.

makapuf 5y ago
Well often the really old timers ( still in tech, so survivor bits here) have seen several waves of tech and know some qualities can withstand the test of time, and other fads will not. And having seen the previous fad come and go, they often are less attached to it than the ones that grew with only it, accepting some of the real benefits of the new tech.

totaldex 5y ago

These effectively boil down to ROI - it's tricky to quantify what return a tool will give, but its even harder to quantify the cost of switching over. At a big enough company, most will shudder at the thought of a massive migration without an equally passive payoff.

FastMonkey 5y ago
A payoff has to happen over years too. Sure you optimally ignore sunk costs when looking at a given project, but if you keep ditching solutions 2 years into a 3-year payoff you're going to lose a bunch of money.