> Why do people think they can "play with new technologies" at work

The same reason software developer salaries are so high. Supply and demand. Companies will do back flips to attract and keep software engineering talent.

> which is wasting not only company money

Some of the best cost saving solutions I've come up with in my career have been thanks to "playing" with new technology. It's the opposite of wasting company money.

> maybe it's time for software developers to grow up and start acting like adults in the workplace

There is nothing childish about loving your work, having fun while doing it, and bringing that attitude to work. It's infectious and great for company morale. Maybe it's time for the negative nancies to grow up, seek therapy, and start acting positive at work and having some fun.

> There is nothing childish about loving your work, having fun while doing it

Expecting to love your work and have fun doing it, is incredibly naive, yes.

> bringing that attitude to work. It's infectious and great for company morale.

Exactly the opposite, relationships become incredibly strained with the rest of the company and there is a lot of frustration when dealing with the software department. Developers are disliked in the company because they are selfish unprofessional time wasters.

The users are just dumbfounded when they present their 8 month rewrite of perfectly working system, in trendy react framework, now with only 80% of the features and in a slower web page. It's really embarrassing.

> Expecting to love your work and have fun doing it, is incredibly naive, yes.

Then I guess I've been naive for over three decades. And getting paid great for it too. I suppose I'll never learn this important lesson considering I'm close to retirement.

> Exactly the opposite, relationships become incredibly strained with the rest of the company and there is a lot of frustration when dealing with the software department. Developers are disliked in the company because they are selfish unprofessional time wasters.

I could imagine that happening with you. There are always a few envious types in any company who think the entire company feels the same way they do. These same folks are envious that the sales people get huge bonuses for "spending all their time on the golf course". Considering I have work relationships going back decades it's safe to say there are plenty of people in most companies who aren't like you.

> The users are just dumbfounded when they present their 8 month rewrite of perfectly working system, in trendy react framework, now with only 80% of the features and in a slower web page.

Of course they would be. That doesn't sound like fun at all. That sounds like a project that didn't take user requirements into consideration. Fun and poor requirements definition sometimes come together, but you are confusing correlation with causation. Loads of overly serious software engineers get the requirements wrong too.

I hope things get better for you and you learn to have fun while still being highly professional. It's a great club to belong to.

There are a lot of reasons to rewrite an existing system. Maybe the existing system is built in a language that is impossible to hire for in the area you’re in. Maybe the test coverage is awful and the code makes it very difficult to write tests. Your tone is frankly pretty condescending and the only reasonable answer to when it makes sense to do a rewrite is “it depends”.

Dunno where you're from, but where I'm from, it is pretty much the opposite world. You're a red flag if you don't see yourself as having fun. Yes, this includes most webdev shoves where one does the equivalent of shoveling virtual manure. (No, I don't agree with this, either).

>Why do people think they can "play with new technologies" at work

Because software dev is a step above code monkeying and people value being able to grow. Which requires experimentation.

It's unprofessional when there are higher priorities or you can't make a potential business case.

> The official ways of this society is that fun is what your free time is for, and work is for getting things done and make money. Why is this different for software development?

Two reasons. 1) Because devs generally have other employment options. 2) Management has no idea how to judge what devs do.

1 is important, because devs can often go work somewhere that lets them work on fun technologies. This is usually at a smaller company and often comes with lower pay, but not so low that anyone would consider it suffering (still easily into the 6 figures).

2 means that the manager only sees the following option: Tell the dev they can't play with fun tech, risk them leaving, and spend many thousands of dollars on recruiting a replacement (who may also leave). OR Tell the dev they can play with the fun tech, and nothing immediately breaks (and the manager can go back to worrying about their day to day problems).

Taking the second option is not necessarily an irrational choice for the manager. Especially if that manager is using an "up or out" strategy (their plan is to be promoted or leave before the long term effects of these decisions can bite them).

Such is the realpolitik of the business world.

> Why do people think they can "play with new technologies" at work, which is wasting not only company money, but other people's time as well.

Because that is where new ideas, new approaches, innovation and knowledge creation happen? In software, like many other knowledge-work professions, you can't just put in a few years at university and then stay on top of your game by simply showing up every day for 40 years. The daily challenges are too diverse and change too quickly. Continuing education is a significant part of staying in the game, mixed with daily application of this knowledge.

Think about it this way - if you're a high-value developer, you've already put in thousands of hours of R&D and practiced with numerous technologies. Much of it on your own time, much on a previous employer's time. This knowledge is the basis of your current skillset. It's why companies pay you a salary. It's how you adapt to novel challenges in daily work for which you, by definition, require a larger body of knowledge to draw from. You know best how to build that body of knowledge.

Some companies are apparently more than willing to reap the benefits of R&D that was done on someone else's watch. But when it comes time to allow R&D on their time, suddenly it's "wasted" and derided as "play". The only thing that's wasted here is the developer's talent. When the "adults in the workplace" behave like this, making arbitrary engineering decisions about what is legitimate work vs play time - despite lacking the engineering context or credentials to make such a bold determination - that reeks of unprofessional behavior.

It would be like me micromanaging a lawyer's document list in preparation for their case. Or me telling a doctor which medical journals they should/should not be keeping up with. I'm not qualified! So I shut up and let them work, and put my trust in their deep knowledge and hard-gained experience. That's professional.

> Software development is the only profession where people expect (and demand) to have fun at work.

Humans in general demand fun at work whenever they have the leverage to do so. That so many don't have fun is not an example to be emulated, it's a problem to be solved. People are more effective when they enjoy what they do. And software is far from the only profession where people are able to pick jobs because they enjoy them.

A few examples from my own immediate experience:

* In the last year our company hired a full-time designer whose express reason for switching jobs was that our project was more fun.

* My dad is a producer for a radio show. He got that job by twice switching away from jobs that he'd stopped enjoying and he now loves what he does.

* My brother-in-law went into law because he knew he'd enjoy it, and he has a blast every day. He's always telling a story about some crazy new legal edge case he ran into at work.

* My wife is a musician and music teacher and absolutely loves it. You should see her when she has her instrument out.

Instead of trying to rob the fun from the creative professions, we should be trying to find ways to help more people be able to enjoy their work. Even aside from the obvious humanitarian benefits, this would have a huge improvement on our economic output compared to the status quo where so many people are basically cogs in a machine.

>Why do people think they can "play with new technologies" at work, which is wasting not only company money, but other people's time as well?

This has been a thing for as long as humans have been working. It's because through experimentation you may discover something that increases productivity.

The guy who strapped a combustion engine to a field plow was probably playing with new technologies at work. And it no doubt cost a lot of money. But now the world is better off because of it.

Yeah, engines are more complex than horses. But productivity skyrocketed. These trade-offs are made every single day, every single year for as long as we've existed.

You must have only ever done minimum-wage unqualified work to be saying that.

Everyone wants a job that they love, and that requires having fun at work. People leave jobs, any kind of jobs, because they're bored and not having fun.

Do you really think they take into account in other fields, that their doctors, lawyers, finance people etc should "Have fun" and change their decisions away from what is straight forward solutions, because of that? They don't. Only in software.

I had a heated argument with a colleague who was fighting to use MongoDB for a new project, even though there was a company wide decision by upper management to NOT use MongoDB in the company. And his only justification was that "he took this job to play around with new technology". If I hade the power to, I would have fired him on the spot, because clearly he had misunderstood the very basics of the employment contract he had signed.

This isn't true. Developers like tinkering with new frameworks. Doctors like experimenting with new treatments or procedures or drugs, often very immature and untested. Lawyers will seek opportunities to flex a new legal strategy or argument in order to make a name for themselves or to impress a judge, even if it may not be the safest strategy for the client. Finance people do just about anything to avoid simple, straightforward, time-tested investment strategies.

> Do you really think they take into account in other fields, that their doctors, lawyers, finance people etc should "Have fun" and change their decisions away from what is straight forward solutions, because of that? They don't. Only in software.

Two things:

1. Both my parents work in law, and both have changed jobs, taken in on new challenges, or focused in a specific area because they were interested in it and wanted to have "fun" at work. Eminent doctors will also frequently filter their patients to focus on cases they deem interesting.

2. You are saying that companies actively support non-optimal solutions just so that software engineers can have fun. It's not the case at all. Maybe bad engineers pushed bad technical choices because they wanted to have fun, and the company went along with it because the bosses didn't know better, but that's driven by the bad engineer, not by the company.

Humans didn’t evolve to sit at a desk all day. We can adapt to it, but some sort of feeling of adventure helps motivate. Interest in the work engages more of the brain and can make one more productive.

I’ve cultivated the ability to become excited about picking apart grody system failures. That never gets old, and unlike adding a hot new framework to the stack, the cumulative effect is always to make things work better.