Seems to be the problem with a lot of technologies. If you're a HN reader, you can start to get the feeling that you're falling behind if you're not doing these things. Even though they are totally inappropriate for the majority of us who are working on smaller systems.

Often there's some tension between individual career development and what makes sense for the project and company.

Ideally, managers create opportunities for people to exercise the former in a sandbox (e.g. some variation of "20% time"), without YAGNI-ing up the project.

Sorry did I say sandbox? I meant container.

I like the fact that I know about a lot of these things, so that if a need arises I'm aware of what's out there and current. I figure when/if the time comes then I'll actually learn how to use them. I think it's just more of a perception that everybody else is moving forward and I'm stuck here in pragmatic land for my work.

Thats not limited to HN.

Outsorcing became a Wall Street fad once a few big name companies did the numbers and found they could reduce costs by doing so.

Soon "everyone" was doing it, or announcing that they were going to, even though they had little to nothing to gain from it.

As that saying goes: when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

And right now that hammer, at least in terms of IT, seems to be containers.

As an engineer I feel an obligation to know about these things and how they work. It might be appropriate for my work. For my own projects I am just going to start out with a Django or Meteor app and if I'm lucky enough to have to worry about scale I'll have some idea of what to do next.

> It might be appropriate for my work.

so might be AS400, but few are trying to learn that I guess.

Let's be fair, it's quite likely that if anyone is looking into this stuff is more because it's the technology du jour, rather then the off chance that they end up with 100 million users. It could be useful, and learning stuff is fun, but that's not the real drive.

> if anyone is looking into this stuff is more because it's the technology du jour, rather then the off chance that they end up with 100 million users

Knowing the technology du jour is a lot more likely to get you a job, even if an older technology is better in some ways.

As a sysadmin, I feel an obligation to know about these things so I have sufficient warning of the next trendy maintenance burden that's coming down the track. This is how I credit my HN reading as real work ;-)

Sure. But it's incorrect to blame, say, Docker for that.

Because I don't think anybody else wants to risk angering the hivemind:

I'll just say it--pretty much only Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Baidu, and perhaps a small handful of other companies need Google infrastructure.

Everybody else is probably just chasing shiny on their investors' dime.

I keep having to say to people "we are not Google and do not have their problems."

Don't forget banks and wall street.