I have to give credit for this topic to my loving wife who to is a software engineer. The basis of this post is based on her observations she shared during recent a car ride.
There a number of risks when choosing to use old technology, make no mistake though, the use of old technologies is almost always a choice. While there are cases when migrating to new tech doesn't make sense or is cost preventative, more often the 'cost' typically accounts for the monetary costs of executing the transition rather than the costs of remaining use of the old tech.
While there are many risks of continuation of using old tech; downtime impacts, increased licensing/maintenance costs, decreased productivity, security and such...I'm going to specifically focus more on the indirect costs with respect to your engineering team(s).
Take a minute and close your eyes. Now imagine your dream job. Imagine what you're working on and what you're working with. If you are an aspiring journalist, did you imaging penning your masterpiece using a feather quill? If you're an experienced welder, did you imaging using an oxy-acetylene welding unit? If you're a software engineer, did you imaging firing up Windows 95 and Visual Studio 97? No? Really? Why not? Whelp, you're likely in good company. Given the choice, no one chooses to work with old shit. For now, stick a pin in this and we'll come back to it in a bit.
Take another minute and close your eyes. Now imaging your dream team. Are they well-versed in the latest technologies? Are they highly sought after, in demand or would they have a difficult time acquiring another job if it ever came to that? Concerning experience, are they primarily junior, primarily nearing the end of their career or are they distributed across various levels of experience?
Let me attempt to knit these two fundamental thoughts together now.
Great products are created by great teams. Great teams consist of a variety of experience levels; junior to expert-level contributors. Great team members prefer keeping current with latest technologies, for personal as well as professional reasons. So what happens if your company chooses to not make use of current technologies? Best case, your team keeps current individually in hopes that one day they can make use of it. Perhaps one day they get to apply their newly acquired knowledge on a future product; perhaps it'll be before a recruiter offers them alternative employment that currently uses that tech. Perhaps instead they simply stagnate and are ill-equipped to apply new tech when the someday comes.
New tech, old tech; job seekers will find job providers (and vice versa) it's a matter of compromises. The seeker may compromise on use of old tech, the provider may compromise on the ideal candidate. More junior level seekers are likely more willing to compromise on positions early in their career. Late-staged seekers (those nearing retirement from the profession) may also be more willing to compromise. What's less likely however are highly experienced seekers in the prime of their career compromising on a position that may place their competitive advantages at risk. Simply put, this industry moves so rapidly that great candidates can't afford to work for companies that are stuck in the past.
It's all about balance. This doesn't mean you should chase every new shiny technological button, but it also doesn't mean you should continuously reject introducing new techniques. Listen to your team; are they whispering of new technologies and techniques that could apply to your products? Are you listening? If people are leaving, are their new positions utilizing newer technologies?
Obviously, tech isn't the only factor in choice of employment but most of the colleagues I've worked with over these past decades hold it in pretty high regard. Please consider it as a factor in establishing your corporate talent pipeline.
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