Boring technology: Why less hype can lead to more productivity

Do you know the feeling? You’re constantly bombarded by new frameworks and unsure whether you should switch. Sometimes the sheer variety feels paralyzing. Another cool new framework or library is released, and many are eager to use it in production right away—but should you really? This article questions the hype and shows why “boring,” proven technology is often more productive.

The Hype Around New Technologies

The tech industry loves innovation. New tools and frameworks are often praised as the ultimate solution for scalability, productivity, or developer happiness. But this drive for innovation comes at a cost:

Exploding Complexity: Every new tool adds dependencies, configurations, and maintenance. Instead of solving problems, we often create new ones. As a satirical comment puts it:

“Once it took 30 Minutes to compile your code. Nowadays, it takes 30 Minutes to download dependencies.”

Short Lifespan of Tools: Many technologies last only a few years—or even months. What’s “state of the art” today can be outdated tomorrow. For example, AngularJS was once the darling of frontend development. Today, it’s considered legacy, and many teams had to migrate painfully.

Fear of the Wrong Choice: The sheer number of options can paralyze us. Should you invest in Vue? Or Svelte? This uncertainty often leads developers to switch tools before they’ve even built real expertise.

Innovation Tokens: Your Limited Resources

Dan McKinley coined the concept of innovation tokens: every company (and developer) only has a limited amount of energy and resources for innovation. If you spend these on exotic databases, frameworks, or languages, you’ll lack capacity for real product improvements.

This concept applies outside software too. Celebrities like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk deliberately make “boring” choices in daily life—like always wearing the same clothes—to save mental energy for what matters. This principle fits perfectly with McKinley’s idea.

A story from Etsy illustrates this: instead of introducing a new database like Redis, the team decided to extend their existing infrastructure with Memcached. This “boring” decision paid off in the long run—it was stable and scalable without adding complexity.

The core of this philosophy: use your innovation energy where it adds the most value—not just on tools that seem “cool.”

What Does “Boring Technology” Actually Mean?

At first, “boring technology” sounds negative—like stagnation or a lack of creativity. But it actually stands for:

• Using Proven Tools: Boring technologies are those that have stood the test of time. They’re stable, well-documented, and widely used—like MySQL or Java.

• Focus on Simplicity: Instead of constantly introducing new tools, boring technology consolidates and reuses existing systems. This reduces complexity and makes maintenance and onboarding easier.

• Sustainability Over Hype: It’s about building systems that work long-term—not those that need rewriting after a year.

The Cost of Hype

Modern software development suffers from a paradox: even as our tools become more powerful, productivity doesn’t always rise. Studies show developers spend a significant part of their time on non-functional tasks—like configuring CI/CD pipelines, managing dependencies, and automating infrastructure. For example, Stripe estimates that developers worldwide spend 42% of their work time on maintenance, debugging, and other non-productive tasks.

Often, before you write a single line of functional code, you have to set up linters, maintain YAML files, and perform other “industrial rituals.” These processes may be necessary—but they add little direct value.

Polyglot Persistence: A Warning Sign

Another example of excessive complexity is polyglot persistence—using different specialized databases for different tasks (e.g., MongoDB for documents, Redis for caching). While this can make sense at first, it often leads to:

• Higher operational costs (each database requires specialized knowledge and maintenance)

• Fragmented knowledge (teams lose track of the whole system)

• Scaling issues (what works locally can become a bottleneck globally)

How to Apply Boring Technology

Here are some concrete tips:

• Use mature technologies: pick tools that have been on the market for at least five years and have well-known failure modes.

• Reduce your stack: less is more—consolidate your tech stack and avoid unnecessary dependencies.

• Document decisions: record why certain technologies were chosen—not just how they work.

• Focus on what matters: use your innovation energy where it brings real value, like solving customer problems.

Less Hype, More Focus

The philosophy of boring technology isn’t a step backward—it’s an argument for sustainability and efficiency in a field often driven by its own love of innovation.

That doesn’t mean standing still or staying in your comfort zone! Openness to change remains important—but not every new framework or tool justifies an immediate switch.

So, next time you wonder if you really need to try the latest framework, remember: the best technology is often the one that just works and has your back. Or, in McKinley’s words:

“This is what you should do, most of the time. Prefer technology that’s well understood, with failure modes that are known.”

ℹ️ This post was created in collaboration with pep.digital GmbH. The content was produced as part of my professional work and is shared here with permission.