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by sigfubar 2681 days ago
> The message is build with what accomplishes your goals and works with your team's skills.

Unfortunately most teams cannot be trusted to pick the right tool for each job without overcomplicating the planned implementation. Ego and the yearning to do “cool stuff” conspire to derail projects that could have been built without fuss using simpler tools.

1 comments

>Unfortunately most teams cannot be trusted to pick the right tool for each job without overcomplicating the planned implementation. Ego and the yearning to do “cool stuff” conspire to derail projects that could have been built without fuss using simpler tools.

Force them to only use simple tools and the good ones will move elsewhere because they know that being stuck on just the simple things is going to limit their careers.

edit: And losing them will probably cost you more project velocity than you'd ever gain with different tools.

Good riddance! A project is undertaken to achieve some specified result, not to advance a career or learn some new tool. Don’t get me wrong: those lofty things are welcome when they occur as a byproduct of developing commercial software, but these cannot be the driving factor behind decisions that affect the bottom line.
Part of working with humans and managing humans is understanding they're human and not machines. And keeping those humans happy does very much impact the bottom line. If spending 20% more effort on a project retains engineers that speed up projects by 30% then it's a net gain for the business. Bad companies and managers don't understand that and then wonder why all their engineers are bottom of the barrel (or rather why their projects end up such disasters while those of their competitors don't).