Hype and Ruin

AI, BlockChain, Kubernetes, Docker

The seasoned veteran will always stop the beginner and ask him why. Especially, when the beginner is so eager to introduce new things.

One may ask, why do you stop him? The veteran may say “I don’t, I just question him.” And often, the questioning still stop the blunders. The veteran is strong and able to keep his team safe from pitfalls. All is good.

The executives seeking funding will not stop the investors. The investors are beginners typically when it comes to technology. They hear the phrases: blockchain, AI, kubernetes, docker and the drool begins to form.

The executives don’t stop the beginner. The veterans do. However, when the veterans aren’t guarding the gates and the executives go around their veterans they get junior level opinions and all of their blunders.

A junior engineer loves to learn. He wants to keep growing. These are especially good things. However, the junior does not know the consequences of his decisions to a company and that isn’t in the center of his mind, yet.

Because the junior wants to learn he will be very eager to accept a new technology. The junior may have not learned how to push back effectively. This leads the junior to outright accepting their bosses requests. Days or weeks later the veteran might catch on and stop the junior and have a private discussion with the executive. The veteran has to slow him down a bit and refocus him. He has to stop the pitfalls of eager technology adopting in favor of using what is present effectively. He can not be a fanboy.

Sometimes this is all too late and the mistakes are on production, the executive doesn’t want to “go backwards” and the junior is frustrated. This is textbook how to get bad technology decisions into production and setup landmines for later.

These future landmines come out as simple exceptions added to the logs, missed production releases, delayed projects, frustrated team members, and employee turn over. The marching drum of “This is how we have always done it” keeps beating. Beating your company to death.

• How do we get out of this mess?

• Do we really have to become the veteran and stop the mindless technology creep?

• Do we have to stop our investors from making mistakes?

• Do we need to train our executives to listen to their technology team?

I emphatically say “Yes.”