Every once in a while I hear a pejorative term in the tech world that I think could be reframed to be constructive. One such term is Resume-Driven Dev

Redefining—and making a case for—resume-driven development

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2021-05-22 18:30:07

Every once in a while I hear a pejorative term in the tech world that I think could be reframed to be constructive. One such term is Resume-Driven Development (RDD).

Don’t get me wrong—these things are pretty universally bad. But these points also represent the most cynical reasons people make decisions that look good on a resume.

The aforementioned list of values on rdd.io is only impressive to the wrong kinds of people. In other words, if you join a company that’s only impressed by the shiniest, newest tech, you’re going to have a bad time.

My argument for reframing RDD is that the things that look good on a resume to the kinds of people you should want to impress are generally good for both you and your company/product.

“What kind of tech choices represent industry best practice, benefit the product, and would attract high quality resumes when we’re hiring?”

All of a sudden, you’re making tech choices that look good on a resume to the right kind of people, you’re likely directly improving the quality of your product by using best practices, and you’re indirectly improving the quality of your product by improving the quality of your engineering team.