We didn't need Kafka. We didn't need Kubernetes. We just needed dopamine.
In neuroscience, dopamine isn't the "reward" chemical — it is the "anticipation of reward" chemical. It is triggered by novelty, uncertainty, and new puzzles.
Software engineers are biologically addicted to this feeling.
When we look at a boring, reliable, 5-year-old Postgres database, our brains feel zero dopamine. But when we read a blog post about a new "Distributed GenAI Event-Streaming Vector Mesh," our novelty receptors light up like a slot machine.
So, we convince the CTO that we need to rewrite the entire backend. We tell him it's for "scalability."
But we are lying. We are just chasing our next biochemical high.
Boring tech makes money. Exciting tech makes outages.