I spoke once with a Microsoft consultant, he was advising us on upgrading strategy, as our customer had a mandate to be at least on version N-1, that is the customer must be on the latest major version or the version before, so at the time we were migrating off Windows 2003 as Windows 2012 was going through internal validation.
He mentioned that on a bank he'd been advising, the mandate was the opposite, namely at most they could be on N-1 and were in the exact same position as we were, except that they were migrating to Windows 2008 and we to Windows 2012 as the N-1 mandate in practice meant that we'd upgrade services every other release, except when there was a waiver, which was often and explained why when I left in late 2012 we still had some Windows 2000 boxes.
As a techie, it was always a pain going back to an old box as you'd try to do something and realise that it was not possible as that feature had only been introduced in later versions. Even worse, was when it was possible but extremely convoluted and error prone.
It's interesting how everybody thinks that it's career suicide to support old stuff when it actual fact most people are hired for a mixture of their knowledge and their capacity to learn. I appreciate that it's lower risk to hire somebody with experience on the exact product but would you rather have an extremely good engineer with no experience in your stack or a good one with experience in your stack?
In personal life, I do the something similar, actually. I have a state-of-the-art digital camera circa 2012, a state-of-the-art camcorder circa 2011, and similar. I'm always around five years behind the tech curve. The cost is often 1/2 to 1/10th, and I'm not sure I lose anything by being five years behind in terms of happiness or much of anything else.
As with anything, there are exceptions. My phone needs security updates, and 4k displays make me more productive at work, so there were places I bought the latest-and-greatest. And when I need to develop for a platform, well, I get that platform.
But for personal life? A used iPod touch 4th gen sells for $20 on eBay. XBox 360 can be had for around $40. Exceptionally nice digital cameras from a decade ago -- workhorses professional photographers used -- can be found for around $200.
The way I figure, I just behave as if I were born five years earlier. I use the same technology at age 25 as was available at age 20.
> I have a state-of-the-art digital camera circa 2012
This is a good strategy for anything with a high/quick depreciation curve. My DSLR body is pretty old now, but still works great (a D7100). The tech in bodies changes quickly so even waiting just a short period of time can save significant money. Spend money on lenses instead which hold their value and typically can be used across many bodies.
Cars are similar. My truck is a 2011, and I have no plans to buy a new used one anytime soon.
Agreed on camera bodies and lenses, but in my view a 2011 car is still quite new. I guess this depends on the country, taxation etc.
IMHO it makes sense to buy a used car at about 300 thousand kilometers. At that point it's cheap, it's already had a bunch of expensive parts replaced, and if it's survived this long it has a high chance of going another hundred thousand (given proper service, obviously).
Of course another point of view is that getting a car serviced is stressful, so it's best to buy new. But then it's even less stressful to mostly ride a bike and use a taxi or rental car when needed.
Counterpoint: I spent my first 3 years at a major programming coding in Java and never actually learned anything there except how to work with people. It was all adding if statements to a gigantic file because no one there knew what they were doing.
I worked in an HR company and didn't learn much.
Then at my last job I worked under a really smart guy who did everything the right way, and I'm way better now. If I had started at a company like that, I would be much farther ahead now.
However, the real think to know is how to architect a project properly with tests/dependency injection/layers, not all the newfangled technologies.
He mentioned that on a bank he'd been advising, the mandate was the opposite, namely at most they could be on N-1 and were in the exact same position as we were, except that they were migrating to Windows 2008 and we to Windows 2012 as the N-1 mandate in practice meant that we'd upgrade services every other release, except when there was a waiver, which was often and explained why when I left in late 2012 we still had some Windows 2000 boxes.
As a techie, it was always a pain going back to an old box as you'd try to do something and realise that it was not possible as that feature had only been introduced in later versions. Even worse, was when it was possible but extremely convoluted and error prone.
It's interesting how everybody thinks that it's career suicide to support old stuff when it actual fact most people are hired for a mixture of their knowledge and their capacity to learn. I appreciate that it's lower risk to hire somebody with experience on the exact product but would you rather have an extremely good engineer with no experience in your stack or a good one with experience in your stack?