Language Wars - Whatever Works!

Over the years one of the most common and perhaps most often misunderstood practice is that of technical professionals to have debates on technologies. The technologies in question are typically ones that each person has had extensive or perhaps not so extensive experience with. Most of the time these discussions are taken in the proper spirit of exchanging insights and improving one's education. However once in a while, the discussion turns into verbal arguments about how technology A is "better" than technology B. To most technical individuals this is part of the territory. However business users and similar non-techies tend to see these debates as highly disconcerting. What are they to make of experts that they respect not reach a consensus about which technology would be proper to use for their business problem.

In my experience it is much less an issue of what technology to be used as opposed to what is the problem that needs to be solved. The age old wisdom of "use the right tool for the right job" comes to mind. In many cases arguments about which database to use still persist in spite of the diminishing return in terms of identifying actual hurdles to solve a problem. A nice recent example came to mind about MySQL vs. Oracle RDBMS. The fact that both products are now supported by the same vendor (Oracle) and both have excellent track records for many large deployments would to most people seem to end the debate on which to use. Yet within many organizations the war still wages. Generally what I see is typically around length of experience or perhaps even age. Most older/experienced professionals tend to gravitate towards Oracle having a veritable treasure trove of industry best practices within past organizations on it's use. On the opposite side, younger/equally experienced professionals who have exposure to different technologies such as Ruby-on-Rails, PHP, etc. have mostly used MySQL. They like the usability, the ease-of-administration, and the elegance of how the technology has worked it's way in many times seamlessly with their toolkits such that others solutions seem cumbersome in comparison. In the end either database is more than likely able to address pretty much any size scale of problem for an organization, however the arguments wage.

These arguments for the most part are not really based on any technical merit. Instead they are based almost exclusively on pre-existing viewpoints and internal politics. For instance building on the MySQL and Oracle example, in many large (and not so large) organizations IT decision makers tend to classify anything for "production, customer facing" to be Oracle with MySQL tagged as "experimental, prototyping". When I inquired about this curious categorization it came down to a perception that the Oracle RDBMS was more "robust/scalable" or had a "better track record" for mission critical applications. Even in spite of pointing out examples such as Facebook or Sabre Holdings the IT leadership continued to stress the use of Oracle. I even had a nice "sit down" session with an executive VP of technology who advised me that even "mentioning" MySQL would cause issues from the CTO and other members of the executive staff. Unfortunately these sorts of encounters far more often than not.

From a technical standpoint pretty much any technology can work to resolve a problem: Java, Ruby, PHP, Scala, Erlang, C, C++, Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, Hadoop, MongoDB, whatever. However no matter the technology whether Open Source or vendor-provided, it requires a commitment from the business to adopt it, own it, learn it... basically invest and believe in it. This is tremendously foreign to many companies who tend to see their legacy applications as necessary evils in doing business not as strategic tools for competitive advantage. While many companies see the use of technology as the domain of high-tech companies, the truth is that many organizations in many different industries use technology to solve problems from auto manufacturers, to supermarkets, to dentists, heck even your local pub probably has a computer system of some kind squirreled away allowing their servers to place orders to the kitchen. 

Generally speaking from my experience organizations that tend to not trust technology are really not trusting their internal partnership with technical departments. Now I will admit that a falling out in a relationship is hardly caused by one party but usually all parties, however generally I find that internal technology groups are having a hard time coping and adapting to the changing world around them and trying to meet the business demands. Again while there are many symptoms such as lack of education, out-dated implementation cycles, etc. the core issue is typically a lack of commitment and that starts from the top. Almost all proper working relationships have C-level leaders who are in agreement both publicly and privately with the business needs and strive to do the utmost to give them what they need. However C-levels that "have doubts" whether directly or indirectly carry themselves accordingly; project plans are padded, micro-management is taken up to "insure things run smoothly", requirements are not provided, etc. These views then travel down throughout an organization resulting in a very large cultural barrier in accepting let alone implementing anything necessary to meet business needs. 

Language wars tend to be used as a scapegoat in almost all organizations as to why they are not getting what they want from their internal technology groups. Instead organizations need to understand what type of technology team they want/need (great HBR article on this concept) and then have the commitment to get there. 

Ow! Too Much Tech - What does all of this mean?

Throughout my career I am often asked in meetings by my fellow technology leaders, business leaders and colleagues about the various technology trends. Most of the questions are about why some of the technologies are being used, for what reasons, how are they doing generally speaking, and what could it mean to businesses and individuals. It is not only my technical perspective that they value, but additionally the non-technical one.

From my perspective, technology has created some radical changes across a variety of industries affecting numerous businesses and individuals. The challenge is pretty simple: how to recognize what is needed out of a sea of change. Firstly many professionals amazingly still see that many of the changes are simply not that many nor necessarily that much of a change agent. This typically means that these individuals will have a lot of learning to catch up on and a lot to digest resulting in a natural selection/de-selection of what is important or not. Often times I point to the mobile industry disruption that Apple caused resulting in the rise of Apple iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft WP7 and the decline of Nokia and RIM. Simply ignoring what is up-and-coming and not really taking careful consideration of why things rise and more importantly who would be the target customer has been demonstrated to be tremendously dangerous for existing market leaders and professionals no matter how long they have been there, how experienced they may be, or how much subject matter expertise they have.

From a high level viewpoint there are several technology trends that have significant impacts both to businesses and individual professionals:

Technology	Meaning to Business	Meaning to Professional
Mobile	Appeals to customers in a different manner; fast, mobile, effective, efficient.	Looking at customers differently and learning techniques to address them effectively.
Social	Word-of-mouth counts more so than ever now. Need to be able to tap into it.	Highly dynamic and fluid. Requires engagement and voluntary participation.
Big Data	Lots of key learning and competitive advantage in data.	How to understand the difference between big data and traditional data.
Cloud	A different way to react quickly to changing business needs.	How to make a complex process, simple, effective and fast.

For businesses the changes mean looking at customers differently, understanding that speed to market which has always been a great challenge is even more important, but also that quality and price matter. If one looks at Apple for example, they have sold a lot of iPhones and continue to sell a lot of really good products at a higher price than competitors. However their customers love the company and are willing to spend their hard earned dollars on what they see as a great value. Many companies definitely want a similar level of passion with their customers though often times are not able to achieve it. 

However for every business that wants to tackle the challenge there are the individuals that need to carry it out. This is where many times professionals find themselves at a disadvantage in that they themselves are not necessarily familar with the changes which makes it difficult to execute. For example many technical professionals I speak with are not very familiar with how mobile platforms differ from their back-end counterparts in terms of developing solutions, managing them, and the like. Similarly even in well defined and well known approaches such as Amazon Web Services are not understood to a point where most IT shops could deploy similar services within their own organization even with outside vendor or Open Source products. 

Often times being able to take even simple steps towards incorporating these trends into existing solutions is a prime example of the how contentious the viewpoints are within organizations. A blend of ill will from prior IT/Business conflicts, lack of knowledge, and plain old stubbornness often times bogs down initiatives unnecessarily resulting in negative impacts to a business in the forms of missed opportunities and even talent loss to competitors. 

While it is true that there are indeed many different changes that continue to emerge at a rapid pace that both businesses and individuals have to deal with, the reality is that if observed with a calm, cool and determined mindset, these can be sorted out into workable and beneficial solutions.

Adapt or Die - Keeping Skills Up to Date

Most business professionals realize that it is absolutely necessary to keep abreast of their industry and keep their skills up to date to remain relevant. For technical professionals this is also very true and very challenging. Many of my colleagues are amazed at how up-to-date I am on my technical and business skill set and often ask how I manage to keep them so topical. The answer is simple: adapt or die.

At first glance this statement seems a bit dire but it does tend to simply capture the essence of what anyone who loves what they do. If you are passionate about what you are doing, then no matter what you find a way to keep yourself motivated to do better. That means doing more, learning more, and making what you do more valuable and enjoyable. 

So that may be a great say mental motivator but what about the nuts and bolts? Basically that is nothing more than plain old hard work. For many technical professionals that I coach, I often ask what they would like to know more about and then go about working out a plan of action for them so that they can improve.

In one case someone wanted to know a little bit more about cloud services and the difference between relational and non-relational data stores. They had been trying their own form of learning and research yet wanted a bit more to help them cement what they had gained. Since the individual was still fairly hands-on, we worked out a plan for them to create a simple "To Do List". Yet rather than building it on relational technology, I thought it would be better for them to sign up for the free Amazon Web Service tier and work with the S3 service instead. S3 was a great way to get them to see how a non-relational data store could be used and at the same time give them some practical exposure to using cloud services to solve a faily simple problem. Within a couple of weeks they had not only solved their smaller problem but they also began to work on larger problems with different services. In a matter of a few months the individual had not only improved in their overall understanding, but had gained the attention of their manager at work which resulted in being involved in a more strategic and valuable project at work.

Simply being aware of a concept is not always enough for people to cement an idea into a key learning. Often times practical application  helps reinforce the concept so that the individual can carry it forward in their career. 

Many times keeping skills up to date is very difficult yet I find with enough effort, dedication, perseverance and planning keeping skills up to date is fun and engaging!