Convincing a client to use Phoenix over other popular web frameworks

I <3 Phoenix but I think this is a bit misleading. It has the best ratio of like:not-like votes but the total number of votes is quite small compared to the more popular frameworks.

I think your response looks good. I’d add a couple more points:

1. that it makes modern, real-time features pretty straightforward to add, and give them some examples of what that means to them as a business.
2. it just runs… fault tolerance due to the backing of the BEAM significantly improves reliability
3. while developers may have to learn Elixir / Phoenix, they won’t need to learn a bunch of other stuff like external background job managers, redis, latest JS front-end framework, etc as all these things are baked in (@sasajuric’s great talk, Soul of Erlang, (Youtube) tabulates these at the end)
4. related to the above - it’s operationally very simple to deploy - reduces DevOps costs and skill base required

It is then up to them to weigh up risks and benefits in their context, and I think it’s totally fair if the concerns related to developer availability outweigh the benefits for them - tech isn’t one size fits all. I don’t think you will find a shortage of other clients willing to go with Elixir/Phoenix.

I don’t want to second-guess, but this kind of question feels to me like they don’t really want to be convinced, but really want you to say “OK we will use Rails/Spring”. If there’s more than a little bit of push-back, it’s probably not worth the effort.

If non-technical people are concerned about your choice of technology it means they’re worried about painting themselves in a corner. Approaching that would involve figuring out which corner it is they’re worried about and then addressing those worries. I don’t think they want to be convinced about one technology over the other, but they seek ensurance of making a good choice. In the end they’re likely not in the position of properly evaluating the brought up arguments anyways.

I am with @LostKobrakai and @adamu here: pick your battles wisely.

I’ve successfully advocated for Elixir 4 times in the last 6.5 years and the companies told me later they were very happy with their choice. Another 7 opted for something else.

Technical merits don’t matter to managers / business owners; they see technical complexities as your responsibility. They are mostly just managing risk. To them picking a stack with smaller hiring pool is a no-brainer case of high risk.

Whether that means they treat their employees like cattle that can and should be replaced at their whim – I’ll leave that evaluation to you. In my experience this was not always the case but to those people “just treat your people well and they won’t leave, duh!” is somehow not common sense. Then again, people leaving so they can focus on kids or side hobbies is a thing as well so I can understand their point of view somewhat.

If you end up trying to advocate for Elixir, emphasize on the fact that there is a number of companies that chose Elixir without having a single Elixir dev in their team, and still succeeded.

This impresses non-technical people.

I dunno, but if the investor or mentor actually try to have a say in which web framework to use, that feel very micro management to me.I don’t want to be this company’s tech leader.

Yep. It’s none of their business, 98% of the time. You want a problem solved? Cool, I’ll solve it for $X thousand. Let’s go.

I don’t tell my plumber whether to use $0.05 tape or $1.20 one. I want a job well done. If that means I pay a few bucks more I am OK with that.

But then again, they are trying to cover their arse in case you turn out to be irresponsible. They want to be able to call the next guy with minimum friction after, if need be. I understand their plight but they definitely can approach the problem in a more respectful and professional manner compared to what they usually do.

Yeah that’s what it sounds like. I don’t think details are what matters, but they hear Tech A all the time, so they’re cautious if they hear Tech B for the first time. If all plumbers you’ve seen bring a wrench I’d also wonder if the next one doesn’t bring one.

The OP mentioned investor and mentor, not founder, CTO or CEO. Using your plumber example, the property investor hired a property manager who in turn hired the plumber. In the most likely event, the investor don’t ever see the plumber. You got to have some trust on the manager you hired, or why bother.

Story of all modern IT economy, seriously. You summed it up flawlessly.

Trust is more and more rare to come by these days.

Sadly it’s a mutually feeding phenomena. I had a few contracts where I was treated rather badly and that just made me turn into a guy who shows up to get his salary, do the minimum / recommended amount of work, and then check out. I am not proud of it but employee motivation should be taken more seriously. You cannot be 100% self-motivated; if you go on that end of the spectrum you’re not an employee anymore and you should just pursue your own business ideas.

Thank you for the correction, I got a bit carried away. In this case it’s definitely none of their business what tech stack is being chosen. Or, they just choose fancy terms and they are not actually investor / mentor. In reality they are something much closer to a direct engineering supervisor.