Employers and employees generally have a common interest. They all want the business to succeed, and the more a business succeeds, the better off its employees will be.

There are certainly small frictions between the management and the people. For example, employees may want to work fewer hours for the same pay. But overall, a company is a machine that becomes more successful when all of its members are individually successful. That is, until we look at most tech companies.

As a consultant, I work closely with several product teams. This year alone, I’ve worked with over a dozen startups, and the pattern couldn’t be clearer: business interests and what software developers want are often misaligned.

When you ask the question “What is the most important thing in your job?” every technician in the world, in every company and at every job interview, will say the same thing: they want to “learn something new”. Engineers often want to learn new technology to put on their resume, but it may not be in their team’s best interest.

As author Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “Another flaw in human character is that everyone wants to build and no one wants to do the maintenance.”

We have an SOS on our hands

In popular psychological literature, “Shiny Object Syndrome” (or SOS) is a pop-cultural psychological concept, where people focus on the most current trend, regardless of its value or usefulness for life. .

SOS is nothing more than a distraction; the term is often used when people fixate on something to the point of losing sight of the big picture. SOS affects entrepreneurs and tech startups because of the qualities that make tech employees unique: they tend to be highly motivated, thirsty for new technology, and aren’t afraid to jump into new projects frequently.

Like an optical illusion, the “shiny object” becomes less interesting once you grab it. As soon as software developers explore a new technology, they almost immediately jump into something new and end up pursuing project after project.

In tech companies, it’s almost guaranteed that every few years, a major technological change will cause a significant part of their systems to “age”. From a business perspective, it’s important to maintain “legacy” systems, but such maintenance will be the kind of project no one wants to work on.

Boring companies

There’s a reason SpaceX spent time on astronaut fashion. In a world where developers want to keep working with the latest innovations, companies are forced to keep up and introduce new technologies faster. All things being equal, it’s an easy choice between working for a company that uses rundown computers or for a company that uses the hottest devices.

Using the latest technology does at least two things:

1. The latest technology is usually an improvement over all other tools available, at least in some important respects. Ultimately, the latest technologies have been built on new knowledge. Using better tools should future-proof the business, simply by reducing its reliance on less popular options.
2. New technologies facilitate hiring. Software developers and their online communities love innovation, so there are usually courses available, blog posts galore, and constant social media chatter.

On the other hand, the introduction of new technologies poses problems:

1. There is almost always a loss of productivity while team members learn them. In some situations, employees may even need formal training, or new hires will need to join us to fill knowledge gaps.
2. Learning new technologies can be confusing for staff. Do they find it interesting? Not all new stuff is created equal, and some people may choose to retrain while others decide to jump ship and learn something else – a different kind of new technology.
3. Companies often find that the people they attract by leveraging new technologies are not the kind of people who will stick around for a while, in which case a slow but steady effort might have worked better in the long run.

It all boils down to properly setting short and long term goals. There is no right or wrong answer, there is only “right answer for the right company at the right time”, which is why it is so important to choose the right technologies and to choose them wisely.

A victory for boredom

The Amish are known for their simple life, simple dress and religion, as well as the thoughtful way in which they embrace technology. They do not live entirely without modern subtleties. For example, they may use small appliances, power tools, and batteries, and they may even use cars or telephones. The Amish, however, use technology selectively; they are very cautious about how a given device can affect their community.

“Amish life is about recognizing the value of agreed boundaries.”
–Erik Wesner, Amish America

Perhaps tech companies should behave more like the Amish: figure out what kind of developers they want to attract and choose their technologies accordingly. If a certain technology looks good on a programmer’s resume today, and four to five years from now, it’s probably a win-win.