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Ask HN: Polyglot Workplace Success Stories?

8 points by carrja99 ↗ HN
I've been a firm believer in choosing the right tool for the job. I've always believed a company shouldn't just bill themselves as a "Java Shop", ".Net Shop", or a "Ruby Shop" but rather focus on delivering results and using whichever language or frameworks work best.

I'm sure a lot of other companies do this... what are some success stories?

2 comments

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1123581321
We consider ourselves polyglot. However, we found that demand for our Rails consulting pulled far ahead of the rest. By fulfilling that demand we gained a lot more experience doing Rails which not only improved our work but increased the number of applications in which we could do a superior job using Rails. This has probably happened to many companies that appear dedicated to one technology.
Jacquass12321
I currently work for a polyglot shop so I guess I can chime in. We employ about ~90 engineers now and have been in business for around 25 years now, so I consider that successful.

The discussion of focusing our scope and becoming more of a single stack shop has certainly come up, and some engineers are in favor of it because it certainly has benefits. Company wide practices can easily apply to all projects, engineering resources are far easier to exchange when everyone uses the same skill set, and knowledge gains are applicable to all projects.

It's a lot harder for my custom tools I write for managing a Perl/WinForms/.NetMVC website to provide benefits for the guys downstairs working on embedded systems in c++.

Personally I prefer the variety of a polyglot shop but I can see where the appeal is to streamline company wide and specialize.

Our spread of technologies is mostly due to self motivated engineers learning new technologies and working on gaining experience to the point where we feel comfortable charging a client to develop a solution using that technology. For example, 4 years ago we'd done no mobile development. Around that time a few engineers dove into personal projects in Android and IPhone development and we've since released several products for both platforms. This was completely facilitated by employee efforts and interests. If no one wants to work on your technology stack we probably won't offer a solution and will just help you find another company.