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You can discourage that. And people move on to jobs where they can pad their resume, and it gets harder and harder to hire people because they don't see a futur

You can discourage that. And people move on to jobs where they can pad their resume, and it gets harder and harder to hire people because they don't see a future in your "boring tech stack".

weatherlite 5y ago
Just as there are people who'd leave if the stack is "boring" there are people who'd leave if the tech stack is insane. Personally I wouldn't want to work in a team that prioritizes resume driven development. It's usually teams that care very little about the company or product, their only motivation is tinkering with shiny tech. That's not for me.
- AA-BA-94-2A-56 5y ago
  Means to an end. I'd work in a team that prioritises resume-driven development for about a year, to brush myself up on all the new stuff. I think it'd be foolish not to, honestly. It comes down to whether you see the software you write or yourself as the important product of writing software. Paradoxically, I see myself as the most important product. Usually my work is a tradeoff between being productive and teaching myself. If I'm being too productive, I back off and experiment more and teach myself concepts.
  - weatherlite 5y ago
    > being productive and teaching myself You can learn Kafka, Map Reduce, Elixir, DynamoDB and shiny new JS framework X like Meteor or whatever, or you can just go deeper on the fundamentals and the traditional tech you already know (learning SQL to a deeper level, becoming really good in Java/.NET/PHP/vanilla JS etc etc). I think the job market has room for both; and to me the second path is more enjoyable and sustainable but to each his own.
ryandrake 5y ago
Is the chicken or egg first? Are companies constantly changing to hip new stacks to attract talent, or are developers constantly scrambling to gain experience on hip new stacks in order to be employable by companies who are constantly changing to hip new stacks? Developers complain "I need to learn NewTech because OldTech is old and no cool company uses it anymore." And hiring managers complain "We need to move from OldTech to NewTech because we can't find developers interested in OldTech anymore."
- mmcdermott 5y ago
  My observation is that both occur and the balance tends to vary by company. I've been in the room when technology N+1 was selected because there weren't many developers for technology N, but I've also seen developers working cool and trendy things into projects that don't strictly need it (where there is a sliding Overton Window around what is "cool" or "trendy").

You can discourage that. And people move on to jobs where they can pad their resume, and it gets harder and harder to hire people because they don't see a future in your "boring tech stack".

weatherlite 5y ago

Just as there are people who'd leave if the stack is "boring" there are people who'd leave if the tech stack is insane. Personally I wouldn't want to work in a team that prioritizes resume driven development. It's usually teams that care very little about the company or product, their only motivation is tinkering with shiny tech. That's not for me.

AA-BA-94-2A-56 5y ago
Means to an end. I'd work in a team that prioritises resume-driven development for about a year, to brush myself up on all the new stuff. I think it'd be foolish not to, honestly. It comes down to whether you see the software you write or yourself as the important product of writing software. Paradoxically, I see myself as the most important product. Usually my work is a tradeoff between being productive and teaching myself. If I'm being too productive, I back off and experiment more and teach myself concepts.
- weatherlite 5y ago
  > being productive and teaching myself You can learn Kafka, Map Reduce, Elixir, DynamoDB and shiny new JS framework X like Meteor or whatever, or you can just go deeper on the fundamentals and the traditional tech you already know (learning SQL to a deeper level, becoming really good in Java/.NET/PHP/vanilla JS etc etc). I think the job market has room for both; and to me the second path is more enjoyable and sustainable but to each his own.

ryandrake 5y ago

Is the chicken or egg first? Are companies constantly changing to hip new stacks to attract talent, or are developers constantly scrambling to gain experience on hip new stacks in order to be employable by companies who are constantly changing to hip new stacks? Developers complain "I need to learn NewTech because OldTech is old and no cool company uses it anymore." And hiring managers complain "We need to move from OldTech to NewTech because we can't find developers interested in OldTech anymore."

mmcdermott 5y ago
My observation is that both occur and the balance tends to vary by company. I've been in the room when technology N+1 was selected because there weren't many developers for technology N, but I've also seen developers working cool and trendy things into projects that don't strictly need it (where there is a sliding Overton Window around what is "cool" or "trendy").