I recently left a large university hospital for a much smaller one because of the pay increase and because it was a career booster. Of course these two things would generally be something to be excited about and a great accomplishment (esp.for someone my age) but I have found myself pouting on the inside as I drive to work every morning, and here is why. The new t=eam I joined is dreadfully behind in the times with coding practices, latest technology (yes they still use classic .ASP), and software - leaving me in a backwards time warp from using VS2008, .NET 3.5, and SQL Server/BIDS 2008 to using ancient SQL 2000/ VS 6.0 relics.
At first, not so bad, I figured not all companies are on the cutting edge right away and are just waiting for that right spark to send them in the direction of change and improvement - nope - I started suggesting (in a professional and non-condescending manner) some new tools and what benefits they'd have for our company on both our side and client side but they (as in the team I am a part of) looked at me like I was an alien and gave me the simple, why would we need that stuff, even after I had made my case.
This has led me to believe that I may not be going about this in the right manner and was hoping some more senior developers/engineers would share their experiences when they were younger and just starting out. I know times have changed but I feel it'd be useful nonetheless and any advice would be much appreciated!
Thanks everyone!
It's pointless adopting new technologies unless they resolve actual problems in a easier and more efficient manner then previous technologies. (Including the learning curve.).
It may be that your university has a huge amount of legacy code, which relies on those old technologies. Moving to later ones can be an extremelly costly and tiresome process which is quite hard to justify.
The way to introduce new technologies would be either at a step change in architecture, like the university as a whole decides to move to SharePoint or whatever, or in a new project, where you can demonstrate the advantages of the new technologies, and let the existing developers have time to get some understanding of them.
Something to bear in mind with all of this, is that most people do not like change, and by changing the existing technology you are going to step on people's toes. For example, the experts in particular systems or technologies.