Ask HN: How do you inspire programmers to work with older tech?

So is there no NEW development going on? Is this just maintenance? If there are new pieces, maybe they'd have a chance to work in newer tech.<p>Also? The way you framed this question seethes with condescension. "beta buzzy framework" and "craplication" and "version numbers &#60; 1.0" suggest a very negative attitude. Perhaps potential employees are reacting to this perceived hostility, not the lack of hip new tech. I might not mind less than bleeding edge, but I don't want to work for or with Mr Youkidsgetoffmylawn. And I AM an old fart who has been doing this for 20 years!

It depends how old. It sounds like you're working on COBOL or something. Most programmers are pretty flexible I think -- at least I am.<p>What's your Joel test score? <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html</a><p>It may be an indication why developers are avoiding you.

You pay them a lot of money, obviously. Or do something else that makes up for the fact that you're not using technologies that developers are drawn to.<p>It's pretty simple economics. If you are using "cool" technologies, you basically get a discount on your developers because there are so many of them that want to work with the tech. The less desirable your tech stack is, the more you have to pay (in cash or benefits) to make up for it.

I would strive for a culture that emphasizes life balance. Reasonable deadlines, recognition, flexibility. Look for the people with kids. Offer part time. Things that the new cool can't touch.

Part of the reason people want to work with the "coolest" technologies is that they want skills that will be relevant/desirable by a wide range of employers. If the skills they pick up working for you are not relevant in other areas, then they're basically wasting their time.

Tell us what tech you are using and we will tell you why no one wants to work with it.

Well the problem is if this tech isn't relevant how are they going to get their next job. The days of company loyalty are done. Insix months if you do a layoff what will they do?

The problem is that php itself has been undergoing a lot of change in the past 4-5 years, and tbh, even symfony 2 is not the "coolest" PHP tech out there. In php land, laravel 4 is the rad thing these days, and from the looks of it, its gonna stay that for several more years. And since its new PHP, most of the people using it are not those who are into "new" techs, per se, but those who used to CI, or Kohana, or Cake, and avoided Symfony because of its blatant copy of Java ecosystem. As a pretty decent php-dev, I can surely say that php 5.3+ can be easily used to create better abstractions and tool-kits than Java.<p>Also, If you haven't yet, take a look at composer and packagist. Their are several cool php libs up there.<p>I am also pretty interested in knowing what are you doing about this problem, because my forte is php and JS, a bit more better at at php, and i am pretty confused about which tech to make a product I have in mind in. Since its a distributed system, PHP might offer a better reach (also because of its popularity as "easy" amongst non-devs). But JS over node is a much better lang to work with, though it would hinder getting talent and traction and would require huge amount of marketing etc.

OK, maybe the "technology" is out of date, how about what you are allowing them do with it?<p>In my circles there are folks still writing and building new tools for the Commodore 64. Same old 6510/Commodore BASIC but employing new programs with new methods and some new add-on hardware.<p>So, as another respondent asked, are you offering them the ability enhance and update that older yet cool useful application (using the tried and true technology), or just merely maintaining it?

You show them traction. Show them the money, the business model and sell the dream. That said, if you like someone, be open to their ideas about using new tools. Just make sure they have an incremental plan, not shotgun re-write.

You don't, you find programmers who want to work with that technology instead. It's much easier to find someone who's goals align with your own rather than trying to convince someone that their goals are wrong.

Old stuff is fine with me. I once considered taking a job as a mainframe programmer (RPG). There is always my free time to tinker with new stuff ( which is what I always do).

You convince people that they will have a <i>career</i> with your company and then hire for that. There are people who are looking for a good career over "bleeding edge" -- some of them are even good. (I've worked with some, although even in such institutions, those who are <i>good</i> are in the minority -- and often incorporating newer technologies into side or non-critical projects where they make sense and save time/effort/money/bureaucracy.)<p>If you can't convince such talent that you can offer a career, then you may be screwed.<p>P.S. Is PHP significantly coincident with such "career" type positions, these days?

What is it? What is it built with?<p>Do you offer part time? Telecommute?