> All of the following is process, business and design failures
none of this is really about tech, its about process.
Your point:
> We don't want to let people grow beyond the cogs we hired them to be
No, The business wants the product to be built as quickly and cheaply as possibly. That is literally what you are paid for. When you hire a cleaner, you don't want them to spend all their time mixing their own blend of cleaning spray, because they read on a blog that its 15% more efficient. You want them to clean.
The very reason that this team were allowed to repeatedly make stupid decisions was because it was dressed up as personal growth. "I'm going to let my team do what whatever they like in what ever tools they like so long as they don't leave, and they hit these moveable targets. Those targets affect my bonus, so lets not make them too hard." Cue a mountain of tech debt, neatly partitioned by age and fashion.
What is so shameful about using the tech you have to finish the task at hand, reusing stuff where you can, so you can spend time on other things? To reference the grain silo analogy again if they all used the same connectors, material, it'd be build by now and could work on designing a better one.
this point:
> There is literally NO reason (other than time, mentoring and desire) that the jr. Java developers couldn't pick up Elixir in a short amount of time and be fully productive.
Yes if they are given the correct time and support. When you have to learn, elixir, scala and nodejs all whilst still supporting production legacy as well, its not a nice environment.
Dumping your legacy on bunch of juniors because you were making services to furnish your CV is unforgivable.
> All of the following is process, business and design failures
none of this is really about tech, its about process.
Your point:
> We don't want to let people grow beyond the cogs we hired them to be
No, The business wants the product to be built as quickly and cheaply as possibly. That is literally what you are paid for. When you hire a cleaner, you don't want them to spend all their time mixing their own blend of cleaning spray, because they read on a blog that its 15% more efficient. You want them to clean.
The very reason that this team were allowed to repeatedly make stupid decisions was because it was dressed up as personal growth. "I'm going to let my team do what whatever they like in what ever tools they like so long as they don't leave, and they hit these moveable targets. Those targets affect my bonus, so lets not make them too hard." Cue a mountain of tech debt, neatly partitioned by age and fashion.
What is so shameful about using the tech you have to finish the task at hand, reusing stuff where you can, so you can spend time on other things? To reference the grain silo analogy again if they all used the same connectors, material, it'd be build by now and could work on designing a better one.
this point:
> There is literally NO reason (other than time, mentoring and desire) that the jr. Java developers couldn't pick up Elixir in a short amount of time and be fully productive.
Yes if they are given the correct time and support. When you have to learn, elixir, scala and nodejs all whilst still supporting production legacy as well, its not a nice environment.
Dumping your legacy on bunch of juniors because you were making services to furnish your CV is unforgivable.