Why Zalando’s tech radar sucks as a stack

I’ve been programming professionally for about 5 years now. So I don’t consider myself a brilliant expert.

Never the less one thing I think that I’ve learned is that it isn’t about the ‘technical problems’ it’s about whether or not you solve a real-world or meaningful problem.

Some people call these ‘business problems’ but they could apply equally in academia/ not-for-profit worlds.

Another thing I’ve learned is that choosing new technology has costs, there are always tradeoffs.

Some of my thinking on this is formed by choose boring technology

It’s good to discuss the social and operational cost of a new technology. I’ve learned for instance that although kubernetes can be a great tool – there is a cost to training developers in it. This cost is non-trivial. And we as technological leaders should be careful when we bring these things in.

I think if you don’t carefully manage technological choices you can end up with something like Zalando’s radar, and while it’s good to have that – you don’t want that to be your entire stack.