How to spot a modern tech company: red flags, business demands, and processes

I’ve wanted to touch on this topic for a while as it seems the phrase “modern technological company” has become a buzzphrase. What do we call the modern tech company? What does it actually mean? Is it just one more buzz phrase? I also noticed that many companies frequently use this phrase to appear more attractive to potential candidates and position themselves more advantageously in the market.

Using this descriptor can be a powerful message in PR campaigns, while there are key indicators and characteristics for a modern tech company. For example, instead of just consuming resources and inventing or surviving merely thanks to past successes, modern technological companies follow and introduce new approaches and solutions that valuable not only for the business but also for the industry.

An authentic definition of this concept will help the technology leaders to better understand their environment, the challenges in execution for successful problem-solving, and the issues they could face during day-to-day operations. Furthermore, it’s important to appraise a company before you decide to join them, and with that, your choice could have a significant impact on your career.

Hence, let’s add more context to this and make it more tangible to better identify what makes a modern technological company. I’ve identified three criteria for a modern tech company: the technology stack, the company processes, and most importantly, their business domain.

Some red flag examples of non-modern tech companies:

• Has a lot of excuses why they do and should keep the legacy technological stack
• Is not invest in the industry and only consumes industry leaders achievements
• Is not invest in employee growth
• You can’t find any public contribution by company employees
• Has products not aligned with the industry tendencies, and you don’t see them relevant in the future

Some green flag examples of modern tech companies:

• Generates valuable content, like articles or public and open-source contributions
• Has industry leaders whose contribution is available publicly
• Supports and partners with smaller companies in the industry. It contributes to making the industry stronger and competitive.
• When you think about the product, it looks like something from the future, and it brings excitement about what it can become.

Modern Technology Stack

Let’s imagine a company using all new technologies. Everything is new. No legacy. No old-school tech approaches. How cool does that sound? Obviously very cool.

Let’s further imagine that the company has only one unique approach to adapt to all new trends in the industry. Imagine your career in that company. Once you’ve gotten used to something, it changes, and the same cycle waits for you again and again. Not very cool. 🙂

It’s exciting to adopt a brand new technology to solve a known problem in a company, and it can be a high priority when solving a painful issue. When a technological solution is closely tied to a business problem, it makes for a healthy modern technology culture.

Technology changes should always be justified. We measure justification using the change price and return on investment (ROI).

The only way tech-savvy employees keep the tech stack modern is to be tightly connected with the business and by holding expertise in the domain. If you need to justify the cost, you should keep aware of what is happening in the business domain and proactively react to the possible changes and challenges. This will help you continuously revisit the technological stack and modernize it based on the business needs and the demands of the domain.

The company has a modern technology stack when employees in charge of the technology are tightly connected with the business domain and regularly reconsider whether the stack reflects the business demands.

This said a modern tech company needs to do the following.

• Tech employees must keep a pulse on what’s happening in the tech industry and be aware of new technologies
• And they must continuously increase their level of expertise in the business domain

Modern Processes in Place

Consider this — how many processes have we built for the world that no longer exists? The pandemic forced many companies to rethink and rebuild processes and strategies, and it will take a while to adapt to these new realities.

Processes are important, but they should not be an end in themselves. They should be clearly justified and be removed or replaced if no longer relevant. There are multiple indicators that a company needs a new process.

First of all, the company leadership should build an environment and culture where employee voices, suggestions, and complaints about processes are acknowledged. Continuous build and delivery are also critical to any healthy tech organization. The leadership team’s intention and willingness to change or adapt a process should be driven by the motivation to build and deliver in the fastest way while not sacrificing quality.

Finally, a modern tech company should have internal standards to measure what the business finds most important. The best way to do that is to define and make public the organization’s effectiveness metrics and numbers.

The company has modern processes when the leadership team is open to revisit and adapt every process based on the business expectations on delivery and internal effectiveness benchmarks.

Processes help to solve obstacles but can create difficulties if we are not maintaining them. Processes can also dramatically improve or deteriorate organizational communication. The things we build represent the communication structure of the organization.

The leadership team’s maturity, flexibility, and openness to modern processes are game-changers.

Modern Business Domain

So, what is the business domain in your company? Are you an industry maker or not? And how relevant will your product be in five to ten years?

The knowledge that you get from the company should be pertinent for your future work. It’s an unacceptable luxury to waste your time on endeavors that will not meet future industry expectations.

In engineering, “legacy code” refers to the technology and architectural designs that do not meet industry standards. The same term is applicable for the product and the business domain. If you are working on a legacy product, you need to make sure that you also spend time modernizing it. But if you are working in the legacy business domain and don’t see how leadership is investing in domain change and modernization, it’s probably time to change your job.

The company acts in the modern business domain when it builds a product that will solve actual problems in the near and distant future. And the company-generated knowledge is used by industry front-liners to lead the market.

The important part here is to align the business needs with the industry tendencies and have an understanding of why and how your product will be beneficial to next-generation companies.

Conclusion

Members of modern tech companies are very lucky. The footprint a company leaves is the value it creates. It’s not always easy to identify a company’s legacy. If you don’t want to rely on luck only when choosing, joining, or investing in a company, think about the company that resonates with your future vision and start to differentiate and identify modern tech companies by their potential.

If you find this article interesting and want to learn more about how to apply it, please feel free to send me your thoughts and feedback. I’d be happy to share my experience and the practical adaptation of these ideas.