The software industry is full of middle aged men, talking to other middle aged men, using jargon that none of them understand, and all of them are hoping nobody will notice.
Actually, that’s completely unfair to men. I’ve seen women do this too. They just do less bluffing, because they’re usually less invested in being seen as knowledgeable about technology. (People who are actually knowledgeable about technology are usually very forthright about what they do and don’t know).
I don’t remember which economist I read that said it, but we’re living in a world that is more complex, which leads to information becoming more distributed, but power is becoming more centralized. The way I have seen this in action is that your average executive of a publicly traded company is just adrift in a sea of nonsense. Being adrift in a sea of anything is disorienting and life threatening, so you reach out for anything that you can grab on to so you don’t drown. Everyone thinks they know what “the Cloud” is - so if it comes up in conversation, you can talk about that for a bit until you can grab on to something else.
“Yeah, the cloud… like you know… we have apps in the cloud.” Apps are another buzzword when deployed properly, so if you just keep talking a little, you can try to make raft for yourself out of whatever other bits of driftwood and seaweed you can string together.
“Like you know… containers. We put our apps in containers in the cloud. You know, with the auto-scaling.” To anyone over the age of 60, it sounds like you might actually know what you’re talking about, but just aren’t that clear because what you’re talking about is super-complicated. That’s when you drop a perfect, succinct dictionary definition on someone as the coup-de-grace:
“Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management.” Now all the other fools who are trying to make rafts out of seaweed and driftwood think you’re standing on the deck of a submarine! You’re unstoppable, unless one of the following two things happen:
- Someone who actually has a submarine shows up, and can look under the surface and see that you don’t have a submarine. “Actually having a submarine” in this metaphor is someone who really knows something about technology. The World War II strategy for when a submarine is suspected in the area is to zig-zag; it causes the torpedoes to bounce instead of detonate.
“Like you know, ChatGPT.” Or any other new fad that is outside the expertise of the person you’re talking to. Most of them will have seen right through you, but still will choose to disengage rather than press the point.
- The money runs out.