In my experience the team should be free to make whatever technical choice they want. The only reason you get dictation from on high about what choices should be made is because your technical leadership lacks the technical depth to advocate for a common stack that is actual useful. Every time I have seen an origination talk about standardizing on some language or framework and its hasn't grown out of the engineering community at that company its been because leadership didn't have a strong technical background and they were making choices based on marketing material, sales reps, or consultants.
The best standardization I have seen grew out of a team who was empowered to make decisions, made good decisions, showed how their decisions were good for the entire origination and helped everyone migrate to one solution which turned out to be pretty good at solving everyone's problems.
If you as a leader find yourself pushing a standard tool set to a team who is hesitant to adopt it the problem is most likely you.
You assume that everyone in the company is acting rationally, and that everyone has the same goals and values. This is usually not the case.
The truth is that for most types of applications, there are several technology stacks that would be perfectly adequate. You get into the tradeoffs, and unless the benefit posed by a specific thing is immediately obvious, these are a matter of subjective judgment. Great technical minds will have differing subjective judgment; no one's judgment is exactly same as another's.
People also usually do not understand their own motives. This is the origin of fads. Everyone suddenly agrees that THING_Y is the best, and then, the next year, everyone suddenly believes it's THING_Z now. If someone can present a dense, semi-passable argument in favor of it, the rest of the uptake comes down to marketing. This is true no matter how smart you think you are.
If you have a technician who prides themselves on always knowing about new technologies, and that's their reputation, it's likely their primary motivating factor will be continuing to propagate that self-image. They might not even realize it.
They will come and say "There is a new tech called TECH_X and it allows us to do these amazing new things!" As long as TECH_X has some value proposition and isn't a blatant or obvious bad fit (meaning obvious and blatant to everyone), their argument is plausible enough and they'll run with that.
They think they're doing this because they learn all the new things and it gives them a competitive edge. In reality, it's because they view themselves as cutting edge, they want everyone else to view them as cutting edge, and need to feed themselves and everyone else some proof validating that desirable conception.
The difference between "political schemers" and your average employee generally comes down to their naivety around the universality and importance of these functions. Which is another danger -- the less-naive employees in the ranks will be actively working their own angles here to attempt to manipulate the psychology of the people around them. This can and does invade technical choices. You can make the best arguments in the world for your stack, but if you have a political competitor, they will work to undermine you, often in non-obvious ways. If they feel now is the time to strike and they can embarrass you, they'll do so; if not, they'll agree and subtly work to sabotage your plan.
There's another type of employee here; the type who wants to keep his day job on cruise control, and will oppose anything new because it would make his short-term daily existence more difficult (and perhaps long-term if the improvement could reduce inefficiencies so much that he becomes redundant), regardless of organizational benefit.
There are many arguments to be made in favor of keeping the status quo, so he will look OK; if your new stack is a wild success, he will be able to say "Oh, I just needed some time to come around" and if your new stack is an abject failure (which happens much more often than people wish to admit, and even more often, it's made to appear an abject failure by political competitors regardless), he will be able to say "I told you so".
People are naturally self-interested and will behave that way all that time. Management must look outside of the individual goals of the employee or team and consider what is in the long-term interest of the organization.
tl;dr This is naive; a purely democratic approach doesn't work because people's goals and values don't necessarily align.
What you have just described is the political reasons for not giving your employees agency in making their own decisions. Technically, while each stack might provide similar value proposition, familiarity and experience with a given stack are an organizational value that even given two equals would cause any rational person to pick the known and understood stack. Essentially you nailed the facts with your first line. If everyone is rational and had the same goals these things sort themselves out. Problems arise when people are not acting with the same goals or values, and on occasion they are not acting rationally ( it has been my experience that differing goals and values are so frequently the cause that assuming irrationality is just noise you can ignore )
So given people with differing goals and values they come to different conclusions about how to pursue those goals. Unless you hire sociopaths most of your employees will want the firm to do well and work with functional tech stacks that accomplish the stated goal of the company. However people in tech leadership don't always share that goal. They make decisions based much more on personal utility then the average worker. They might sign that sweetheart deal with a vendor because they see it as an avenue for a career change in the near future, or they might want to make sure no one below them starts to outshine them so they keep the stack something they understand ( knowing full well that someone not in leadership has much more time to persue learning ), or they know if they force an outdated but well known stack they can hire cheap.
In general none of those conditions are good for people actually doing the work and they know it which is why they push back. It gets propagated up the stack as naivete or fad chasing, but in general its leadership insulating their position ahead of the company or their co-workers. Those leaders fail and those companies fail. When decisions like this are pushed down from on high look out, its generally a sign of bad culture and a bad company
Technically, while each stack might provide similar value proposition, familiarity and experience with a given stack are an organizational value that even given two equals would cause any rational person to pick the known and understood stack.
This is not at all the case. There are many rational arguments to be made for abandoning an outmoded-but-already-in-place practice or stack, regardless of the knowledge base that already exists in the company. Many people could and would suggest a conversion to a new platform in good faith. Sometimes this would be the right decision, and sometimes it wouldn't; it really depends on the particulars of the organization.
If everyone is rational and had the same goals these things sort themselves out.
People are not always going to have the same goals. You can't limit your organization to a subset of people who are all ideologically aligned.
Also, people frequently don't understand their motives for something; that is, they ascribe some rational-sounding reason to behaviors they are biologically driven to perform. They may fully believe their goals are aligned, but come to find out, they're not.
Unless you hire sociopaths most of your employees will want the firm to do well and work with functional tech stacks that accomplish the stated goal of the company.
Sure, and since there are many tech stacks that would do well, this doesn't mean anything. People can disagree. When they disagree, the subjective judgment on the tradeoff must be passed up to a central authority.
However people in tech leadership don't always share that goal. They make decisions based much more on personal utility then the average worker.
You're grossly overestimating the "average worker". The average tech workers wants to keep his job simple and easy so he can browse reddit all day at work.
You also assume that these things don't factor into the decisions of average workers. They do. Some workers aspire to be leaders, and, less naive about human nature, are willing to employ some showmanship and artifice to get there.
In general none of those conditions are good for people actually doing the work and they know it which is why they push back.
None of the conditions you listed are good, but mature technical leadership, including standardization on a reliable stack (and, of course, a willingness to make rare-but-justified exceptions) is a boon to all.
It gets propagated up the stack as naivete or fad chasing, but in general its leadership insulating their position ahead of the company or their co-workers.
There is a great deal of naivete and fad chasing everywhere, inside and outside of leadership. The ability to recognize it is valuable.
Those leaders fail
Quite the contrary. Leaders do these things because, as long as one maintains plausible deniability, they are rewarded richly.
and those companies fail. When decisions like this are pushed down from on high look out, its generally a sign of bad culture and a bad company
Companies that understand human psychology, both in the public and in their employee base, are extremely successful, because ultimately power comes down to the consent and resources of others. They are also usually the companies people most want to work for.
Comments
In my experience the team should be free to make whatever technical choice they want. The only reason you get dictation from on high about what choices should be made is because your technical leadership lacks the technical depth to advocate for a common stack that is actual useful. Every time I have seen an origination talk about standardizing on some language or framework and its hasn't grown out of the engineering community at that company its been because leadership didn't have a strong technical background and they were making choices based on marketing material, sales reps, or consultants.
The best standardization I have seen grew out of a team who was empowered to make decisions, made good decisions, showed how their decisions were good for the entire origination and helped everyone migrate to one solution which turned out to be pretty good at solving everyone's problems.
If you as a leader find yourself pushing a standard tool set to a team who is hesitant to adopt it the problem is most likely you.
You assume that everyone in the company is acting rationally, and that everyone has the same goals and values. This is usually not the case.
The truth is that for most types of applications, there are several technology stacks that would be perfectly adequate. You get into the tradeoffs, and unless the benefit posed by a specific thing is immediately obvious, these are a matter of subjective judgment. Great technical minds will have differing subjective judgment; no one's judgment is exactly same as another's.
People also usually do not understand their own motives. This is the origin of fads. Everyone suddenly agrees that THING_Y is the best, and then, the next year, everyone suddenly believes it's THING_Z now. If someone can present a dense, semi-passable argument in favor of it, the rest of the uptake comes down to marketing. This is true no matter how smart you think you are.
If you have a technician who prides themselves on always knowing about new technologies, and that's their reputation, it's likely their primary motivating factor will be continuing to propagate that self-image. They might not even realize it.
They will come and say "There is a new tech called TECH_X and it allows us to do these amazing new things!" As long as TECH_X has some value proposition and isn't a blatant or obvious bad fit (meaning obvious and blatant to everyone), their argument is plausible enough and they'll run with that.
They think they're doing this because they learn all the new things and it gives them a competitive edge. In reality, it's because they view themselves as cutting edge, they want everyone else to view them as cutting edge, and need to feed themselves and everyone else some proof validating that desirable conception.
The difference between "political schemers" and your average employee generally comes down to their naivety around the universality and importance of these functions. Which is another danger -- the less-naive employees in the ranks will be actively working their own angles here to attempt to manipulate the psychology of the people around them. This can and does invade technical choices. You can make the best arguments in the world for your stack, but if you have a political competitor, they will work to undermine you, often in non-obvious ways. If they feel now is the time to strike and they can embarrass you, they'll do so; if not, they'll agree and subtly work to sabotage your plan.
There's another type of employee here; the type who wants to keep his day job on cruise control, and will oppose anything new because it would make his short-term daily existence more difficult (and perhaps long-term if the improvement could reduce inefficiencies so much that he becomes redundant), regardless of organizational benefit.
There are many arguments to be made in favor of keeping the status quo, so he will look OK; if your new stack is a wild success, he will be able to say "Oh, I just needed some time to come around" and if your new stack is an abject failure (which happens much more often than people wish to admit, and even more often, it's made to appear an abject failure by political competitors regardless), he will be able to say "I told you so".
People are naturally self-interested and will behave that way all that time. Management must look outside of the individual goals of the employee or team and consider what is in the long-term interest of the organization.
tl;dr This is naive; a purely democratic approach doesn't work because people's goals and values don't necessarily align.
What you have just described is the political reasons for not giving your employees agency in making their own decisions. Technically, while each stack might provide similar value proposition, familiarity and experience with a given stack are an organizational value that even given two equals would cause any rational person to pick the known and understood stack. Essentially you nailed the facts with your first line. If everyone is rational and had the same goals these things sort themselves out. Problems arise when people are not acting with the same goals or values, and on occasion they are not acting rationally ( it has been my experience that differing goals and values are so frequently the cause that assuming irrationality is just noise you can ignore )
So given people with differing goals and values they come to different conclusions about how to pursue those goals. Unless you hire sociopaths most of your employees will want the firm to do well and work with functional tech stacks that accomplish the stated goal of the company. However people in tech leadership don't always share that goal. They make decisions based much more on personal utility then the average worker. They might sign that sweetheart deal with a vendor because they see it as an avenue for a career change in the near future, or they might want to make sure no one below them starts to outshine them so they keep the stack something they understand ( knowing full well that someone not in leadership has much more time to persue learning ), or they know if they force an outdated but well known stack they can hire cheap.
In general none of those conditions are good for people actually doing the work and they know it which is why they push back. It gets propagated up the stack as naivete or fad chasing, but in general its leadership insulating their position ahead of the company or their co-workers. Those leaders fail and those companies fail. When decisions like this are pushed down from on high look out, its generally a sign of bad culture and a bad company
This is not at all the case. There are many rational arguments to be made for abandoning an outmoded-but-already-in-place practice or stack, regardless of the knowledge base that already exists in the company. Many people could and would suggest a conversion to a new platform in good faith. Sometimes this would be the right decision, and sometimes it wouldn't; it really depends on the particulars of the organization.
People are not always going to have the same goals. You can't limit your organization to a subset of people who are all ideologically aligned.
Also, people frequently don't understand their motives for something; that is, they ascribe some rational-sounding reason to behaviors they are biologically driven to perform. They may fully believe their goals are aligned, but come to find out, they're not.
Sure, and since there are many tech stacks that would do well, this doesn't mean anything. People can disagree. When they disagree, the subjective judgment on the tradeoff must be passed up to a central authority.
You're grossly overestimating the "average worker". The average tech workers wants to keep his job simple and easy so he can browse reddit all day at work.
You also assume that these things don't factor into the decisions of average workers. They do. Some workers aspire to be leaders, and, less naive about human nature, are willing to employ some showmanship and artifice to get there.
None of the conditions you listed are good, but mature technical leadership, including standardization on a reliable stack (and, of course, a willingness to make rare-but-justified exceptions) is a boon to all.
There is a great deal of naivete and fad chasing everywhere, inside and outside of leadership. The ability to recognize it is valuable.
Quite the contrary. Leaders do these things because, as long as one maintains plausible deniability, they are rewarded richly.
Companies that understand human psychology, both in the public and in their employee base, are extremely successful, because ultimately power comes down to the consent and resources of others. They are also usually the companies people most want to work for.