21–28 of 28 posts
I don't work at places that aren't already coughing up for the right tools. Literally. I have declined jobs because of this and would leave my current employer if this happened.
In my experience, the best tools are usually free.
1) Just use them. When you're demoing the product after a certain amount of work, explain how this new tool you've incorporated has benefitted the project in some major way.
I got Django accepted into the federal government doing this in what I believe was its first deployment (agencies don't generally talk, so there's no way to confirm that.)
Python was an accepted language, so I just wrote code in Django, explained how its use 'as a library' would expedite future releases, enable RAPIDER development and keep a clean, structured codebase, which was something they were having troubles with.
2) Choose products that actually DO provide benefit to the project. Sometimes it's hard, as a developer, to know the difference between "I want to use the Play Framework for this" and "The Play Framework is the right tool for this job." I often struggle with this myself, as I want to learn new things, and it's easy to get caught up in a new toy's feature list, and directly apply that to pain points you're having currently. When I was learning Ruby, I saw it as the tool to fix a lot of problems. Then, when I was learning Python, I saw the flaws in Ruby, and laughed at how I ever thought Ruby was the right idea. This isn't meant to be a slight on Ruby, as I'm guessing if I'd learned them in reverse order, I'd have had the reverse opinion.
It wasn't until well later that I got a good baseline for what each was actually better at (aside from the marketing points), and how to determine which one might fit a project better. It was even longer that I could make an emotionless decision to determine which actually made more sense _for a given project_.
If you have a real, valid reason to select a new language/framework/tool, and can both express the pain point to your boss, and illustrate how this new solution can reliably resolve that pain point without introducing equally sized, but different pain points, then it should be an easy sell. If you can't illustrate that, you might be a victim of your own personal bias. Don't feel bad, it happens.
Become the boss. But you may find that your arguments aren't as persuasive as you thought they were once when you are the boss.
In retrospect, the answer was / would have been always to leave.
Not only does it reduce your productivity while increasing your frustration. It marginalizes you in your career.
Get out, and look for some place interested in helping you maximize your potential.
(Note: This assumes you really do know what the best tools are, for a given circumstance. Inform yourself -- don't just assume.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, the best tools are usually free.
I've found a great deal of resistance in using free tools. Tools that cost 4 figures seem to sit "just about right" in the managerial mindset where I come from. Some managerial cultures seem to really ( _really_ ) want to see cash laid out for anything before they will believe it holds any virtue.