I really like that “X vs Y” example. I was just on a team where we were estranged from the business folk who would supposedly be using our products and it very much felt like a “Y”, where my boss cared much more about the tech stack than the value (if any) we could deliver to the users. Suffice it to say the team was cut in a round of layoffs. I had fun working with things that I normally wouldn’t work with (eg Neo4j) but to me surprise it was very demotivating not feeling any purpose behind what we were building, tech stack be damned.
I have come to not care much about the tech stack, I work with all sorts. But by extension I grow weary of of dealing with technical problems that are only tangential to the business problems.
Incidental complexity it can be called. Problems outside of the core business domain or problem you are solving. Like, you can't get the data in the right format because your version of a DB library doesn't support it, something like that. I want the tools to get out of the way so I can focus on the problems.
I bring that up because I find certain ecosystems respect that a lot more than others. Some people are busy building Jenga towers of abstractions because coding is fun, but many of us are knee deep in the business domain and just want the tools be clear and easy.
