Re:Build versus Buy
by Ididntdothis on Monday April 13, 2020 @03:08PM
(#22858976)
“Write a simple TCP listener in Python to read a stream of data and then reply to it? That's crazy talk!”
This has infected my company quite a bit. People get really nervous as soon as you write something that’s little novel. Writing everything from scratch is bad but you also need room for people to innovate.
It’s shifting the complexity from development to operations ( or “gluing shit” as a sibling has pithily observed.
I’ve found this to be common in places with lower engineering skills. The “engineers” are mortally afraid of building anything novel for fear of failure; the COTS approach can get many clever folks pretty far in their career.
Re:Build versus Buy
by TurboHaskal on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @05:55AM
(#22864187)
NIH and concrete over generic solutions all the way, before you end up in the soulless hamster wheel of constantly upgrading 3rd party software.
However, even more annoying is working at a Never-Invented-Here organization. I've been at a place which hired brilliant people, but then didn't let them innovate on pretty much anything. Write a simple TCP listener in Python to read a stream of data and then reply to it? That's crazy talk! We need to write a full Django app and deploy it behind Nginx behind a load balancer so that we can pretend it's highly available!
Don't get me wrong: the off the shelf approach is usually the right thing, but sometimes it just adds complication where it didn't need to be. It's insulting to be told you were hired for your expertise, but then not be allowed to actually use it.