[matrix]

I think the author might not realize the substantial difference between working in a tech company (the HN audience) and in supporting roles in non-tech businesses. I have worked in both worlds, and it really just comes down to choosing the right tools for the job. In tech you're supposed to be on the cutting edge. That's part of what makes it fun and rewarding.

However, if anybody feels lesser for working in non-tech they're probably thinking the wrong way about the value they're creating. It can be immensely rewarding to build something unsexy and relatively simple that moves the needle by millions or even billions of dollars.

[lwb]

> I think the author might not realize the substantial difference between working in a tech company (the HN audience) and in supporting roles in non-tech businesses.

I too underestimated this -- a tech internship at ExxonMobil was such a vastly different experience from a tech internship at Facebook that they could barely both be considered the same field.

[thrower123]

The biggest tech companies in the world run on mountains of C and Obj-C code that are old enough to buy a beer or rent a car without paying extra.

The thing about the bleeding edge is it's too easy to cut yourself and bleed out. I see lots of people bogging theselves down in the details of their sexy new framework, without understanding the principles of what it is doing - which is rarely different than using cool new thing n-1 or n-2 correctly.

[pandalicious]

I think you're overestimating how much development at tech companies is done using newer languages. Java is the dominant language at both Amazon and Google.

[sound1]

Yep, if your company's core business is not tech, be prepared to work on shitload of legacy and outdated technologies.