The Heat Death of Enterprise IT

GOTO Copenhagen 2021

Most Web Applications have more frameworks than developers. Many have more NPM / Maven / NuGet libraries than users. Were these ubiquitous we might be OK, but this is far from the case. It is entirely possible to be a legitimate expert in some platform, yet move to a new project where every dependency is unfamiliar.

Given this diversity one might expect a renewed emphasis in our industry on specialisation. But the reverse is the case. The modern developer is expected to conduct their own QA, whilst transitioning to Cloud Native and being a Product Person. In previous decades we questioned what it meant to be an expert in our trade, today that seems quaint. A more relevant question is - “are we so spread out that expertise is no longer possible?”.

In this talk Garth will explore the proposition that Enterprise IT will soon be so spread out that skilled work is no longer possible. Along the way we will explore why you need to be a Full Stack Developer in four different dimensions, why all your code sucks and how to be successful on the job and get away with it.