Boring tech → Business success

Most businesses are not building tech products. They are building products.

Yet we love to reinvent the wheel, roll our own solutions, and put the tech first.

I’ve done that far too often. Itching to build something with a shiny new experimental framework.

Sadly, no one (apart from other engineers) cares, how beautiful the tech is if it doesn’t solve the right problem for the right person.

The longer I’m in the field, the more I see that tech choices should be boring for almost all projects.

A language in which it is easy to find talent. A framework that’s been around forever. Just a simple relational database.

And picking off the shelf as much as possible to move fast.

Do you know how many times I’ve built a login system? Too frickin’ often. Three months into the project: “Sweet, we’ve got proper user management and a skeleton; let’s build the product!”. 🤦🏻♂️

The thing is…

If you choose boring tech and pick a lot off the shelf, you’ll find plenty of constraints.

That’s good. Freedom is found in making choices and moving on.

You could build many of the components yourself. They’d probably fit better that way.

But you probably shouldn’t if you care about solving the actual business problem your customers are prepared to pay you for.

You get a limited amount of swings. Make them count.

Best regards, Taj