Custom solutions built to fill vendor gaps often outlive their usefulness, quietly accumulating maintenance overhead long after the vendor ships a native solution. Platform engineers are especially prone to this pattern. The key is staying loosely connected to what your vendors are shipping so you can recognize the repayment moment for that technical debt and decommission unnecessary custom tooling. Practical suggestions include subscribing to vendor changelogs, newsletters, and using AI tools like Claude to monitor vendor release feeds efficiently.
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Why do we build our own things?Platform Engineers will recognize thisThe slow drift problemStaying connected without it becoming a jobKeeping paceTags:Sort: