I’ve been thinking about how teams make technology decisions. After seeing the same patterns repeat across a few different teams, it’s started to make sense to me why some ideas take root easily while others never seem to get traction.
On the surface, it looks like a logical exercise: tradeoffs, benchmarks, cost of ownership, performance, security, velocity. We make comparison charts, run evaluations, and try to arrive at an answer that feels objective.
But technology choices are rarely made with logic alone. They are about identity.
Every stack carries a culture. React has its fast-moving product-builder vibe, Ruby on Rails has its elegance and craftsmanship story, WordPress has its scrappy pragmatism and deep commitment to composability. Every ecosystem has its myths, heroes, and villains, and joining one means subscribing to a particular worldview about what “good” software looks like.
So when a team defends or rejects a technology, they’re often defending or rejecting a part of their identity1. It’s not, “we use React because it’s modern,” rather it’s “we see ourselves as builders who stay at the edge of what’s current, always experimenting, always shipping.”
This kind of shared identity becomes more entrenched the longer a team works together and invests in a particular stack. Suggestions to change it can feel like a challenge to the group’s sense of self. This can be especially noticeable if a vilified technology resurfaces later as a viable solution. Even when the data supports the alternative, emotion quietly wins.
This isn’t good or bad, it’s just real. It’s a reality worth naming, because once you do, you can stop asking why a team is resisting something and start understanding what identity they’re protecting and what worldview they’re defending.
And perhaps that is the first step to making better decisions, not by removing the emotion but by understanding the culture and sense of belonging that shape them.
Once you start seeing technology through the lens of identity and belonging, you notice it everywhere: in the tools we defend, the language we use, the stories we tell about what “good” looks like.
In the end, choosing the “right” technology isn’t just about logic. It’s about what we feel at home building with, what aligns with our identity, and what we believe is worth our time and care. There’s no single right answer, only what’s right for your team, right now.
Footnotes
- That’s why decisions like this one from Motion to move off of Typescript feel so big. ↩︎
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