I saw this question and it made me curious about a different but somewhat related question. Briefly, the linked question asks whether it is professional, as a potential employee, to declare in a contract that you refuse to work with certain technologies. In particular, the question used Excel as a specific example.
Would it be seen as unprofessional to informally mention, (e.g during an interview,) the following:
- You do not like working with a given technology, because you find that it is a source of frustration and dangerous unexpected behaviours.
- If you find out that it is being used in the company for something core to the company's products, you will argue vociferously that the given core functionality should be re-implemented in a less dangerous technology at the earliest opportunity.
- If need be, you are willing to perform the re-implementation yourself, simply to avoid being employed somewhere that stakes so much on such a rickety piece of technology.
Given that this message is delivered in a way that does not demonize any current the users of such technology, at worst labeling them as unaware or misguided by bad conventional wisdom, is such conduct unprofessional?
(My actual feelings on the matter shouldn't make a difference to the response to this question, but I'll explicitly mention that I do not have these strong feelings about Excel in particular, or any other piece of software at this time. I'm merely curious about whether this would be considered professional.)