How to avoid learning new things as a software engineer

Learning is the wrong term, let's call it hardening

Once you have ten years of experience, you pretty much grasp how it all works. Software engineering, how to run teams, and how to create a successful business: these things don’t change. There are just different versions of a few core ingredients that get remixed over and over into new flavors.

But it is so exhausting trying to keep up. When you were in high school you listened to new music, and then again some in your 20s. But eventually, you just stopped trying out new things. All new music started to sound like other older music, and it bothered you that people didn’t know this. Never mind that the music you listened to was like this as well; your music was the First Music, the Best Music, the Only Music.

And so it is with technology. What you cut your teeth on is the best approach, and other approaches are just approximations of that or terrible shifts away from The One True Way. So don’t think of the need to learn new things. Instead, you should seek to fortify your existing opinions, spending time hardening these views into solid rock.

For example, a younger developer might tell you about a new cloud architecture pattern and how it could be applied to your product. Say something like “the cloud just means it is somebody else’s computer” and talk about a recent AWS outage. Tell them that to program for the cloud, you have to understand how servers actually work, then tell them a story about a server that caught on fire earlier in your career. What you are aiming for here is to not reveal that you don’t know what in the objective-hell they are talking about, while also coming across as deeply knowledgeable. You are not ignorant of the new technology they mention, you are just so aware of it that you don’t know its name.

But eventually, you will have to research a new idea. You will need to do this carefully, or you may learn something. Think of your research as opening the door to a well-decorated room. As soon as you open the door, search for an ugly piece of furniture and examine it in detail. Don’t look at the rest of the room. Then quickly close the door. When anybody asks about the room, tell them about how hideous that yellow couch is, and how it doesn’t match your taste. Don’t think of the yellow couch within the context of the rest of the furniture, and when somebody talks about this room just talk about the One Detail That You Hate - the yellow couch. After all, you have seen more couches than your coworkers and know an ugly couch in other situations hasn’t worked out. Then when the topic is brought up you can just point to the yellow couch and say things like:

• it’s a v1, but a promising one I guess

• the community around it isn’t huge

• yeah, but it is stateful

• but it isn’t fully supported yet in all browsers

• I don’t know, all these javascript things take up a lotta memory

• seems slow, have you seen the benchmarks?

• seems like a weaker version of Technology From Ten Years Ago Which You Happen to Know Very Well