Depends where you get hired. This article seems to deal with getting hired at a company whose main line of business is not technology (say finance, which Dominic seems to recruit for). In that case, your employer will not care about your beautiful C++ code or super-efficient way to do X -- unless you can tie it back to the company's main line of business and making money for the firm. An internal squabble about the more correct way to do X will mean nothing to the non-technical upper management in a non-tech firm. Non-tech firms don't care about technology for the sake of technology because they don't sell technology -- the firm has other priorities and IT is just a side show to help get the firm's mission done.