Choose Boring Technology

I wrote a reaction essay about this in 2018 and the position has aged well. The hardest version of “choose boring” is when you are the boring choice — when the right move is to keep using what your team already knows instead of what’s interesting to you personally. The friction this generates inside engineering orgs is real, and it doesn’t get easier with seniority. McKinley’s “innovation tokens” framing is the part I still find myself reaching for years later.