The hidden cost of choosing the coolest tech stack

0xMarko|2025

There’s always a new framework, database, or tool making headlines. Every week it seems like there’s a “must-use” technology you’re falling behind on.

It’s exciting — but it’s also dangerous.

As an engineering leader, I’ve learned that chasing the “coolest” tech often slows teams down. It sounds fun at first. But over time, it creates bigger problems: harder hiring, more bugs, and painful maintenance.

Choosing the latest and greatest isn’t just a tech decision. It’s a business risk.

Why Chasing Trends Can Hurt Your Company

When you adopt a new tool just because it’s trendy, you often face hidden costs:

  • Steep learning curves: Your team spends more time learning, less time building.
  • Hiring challenges: It’s hard (and expensive) to find people who know bleeding-edge tools.
  • Immature ecosystems: New tech often has fewer libraries, less documentation, and fewer experts.
  • More bugs: Newer tools are less tested, and break more often in production.
  • Fast-changing versions: Young projects often change quickly, forcing costly upgrades.

Meanwhile, companies that stick to “boring” but reliable tech — think Rails, Postgres, Java — are quietly winning customers.

A Quick Checklist: Should You Adopt That New Tech?

Before you add a new framework, database, or platform to your stack, ask yourself:

✅ Does most of my team already know it (or can they learn it quickly)?
✅ Is it stable, with good documentation and community support?
✅ Are there enough developers out there who know it?
✅ Will it make our systems simpler, not more complex?
✅ Will it help us ship faster and serve customers better?
✅ Is it actively maintained by a trusted group or company?
✅ If it doesn’t work out, can we easily move away from it?

If you can’t honestly say "yes" to most of these, you might be choosing risk over results.

Boring Tech Wins

The best tech choices often aren’t exciting. They’re proven.

Many top companies run on “boring” tech: Postgres, JavaScript, Java, AWS. These tools work, they scale, and it’s easy to hire people who know them.

Choosing proven tech lets you:

  • Ship faster
  • Hire easier
  • Spend less time fixing things
  • Focus on solving customer problems

In the long run, boring tech beats cool tech every time.

Final Thought

Ship value, not vanity.

The goal isn’t to impress other developers. The goal is to deliver real products to real customers — quickly and reliably.

Next time you're tempted by the latest shiny tool, ask yourself: Is this helping us ship? Or just making us feel cool?

Choose "boring" tech. Your team (and your future self) will thank you.