“NPM was supply chain attacked, so stop using Java.” - our CISO.
So many people. So little expertise.
“Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing [technology executives]. You need to think of [them] the way you think of a lawn mower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ - lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about [technology executives].”
– Brian Cantrill (Originally about Larry Ellison specifically)
This also applies to calling LLM’s droids.
The issue I feel, is we live in a society that equates money with importance. This guy over here made lots of money so he must be smart right? No, no it doesn’t.
The headline should be Stop Talking to Technology Executives, Tax Them.
I think the root issue is more around the belief that US companies operate off of meritocracy.
I.E. only the most qualified and competent people make it to the top.
American execs definitely fail upwards. I have seen pharma execs fuck up to the tune of $200M+ and then get poached for more money.
US companies operate off of the Peter Principle, psychopathic willingness and ability to exploit others, and a merciless drive for profit.
Here’s a similar post by Ed Zitron (Titled: Make Fun of Them). He gives a few examples of complete nonsensical stuff that some big Tech CEOs have said, and goes on to argue that more people, especially those who cover tech in media for a living, need to be far more critical of tech CEOs and not just basically go “oh wow thats so cool” to everything they say.
Guess the reason tech CEOs have bought up several news outlets
The following doesn’t apply to everybody in technology, but it applies to enough of them: At some point STEM education was the only thing the Olds cared about because of something something Asia, and now we have a couple of generations that are highly educated on paper and comically unaware of the complexity of the world outside of WordPress plugins.
I was going to say it’s not just technology executives. I’m glad the author addressed this too. It’s the whole industry.
People do this to ourselves too. How often do people see a tech nerd and think they’re some sort of all knowing demigod.
“You’re a tech guy. Here fix my thing.”
“Tell me about such and such complex topic complete outside of your niche professional expertise but you’re of the All Knowing so opine me your All Knowing wisdom.”
Everybody just fucking stop already.
You trigger their autistic word vomit. They use an excessive amount of tech jargon you don’t understand. So people assume it must be profound insight. In fact 99% of what they’re saying is complete non-sense.
Why are you describing me so well?
The number of times I’ve seen eyes glaze over after someone asked a question they shouldn’t have and didn’t want the answer to, is too damned high.
Also, sometimes, I’ll go into a ridiculous level of detail just to intellectually beat someone over the head with how much I know so they’ll stop asking questions. They seem to think they’re being clever and trying to “prove” that tech guys don’t know much more than the rest of the “tech literate”.
I’ll tell you, the amount of information in my brain from working IT support for a decade would make most people’s head spin for hours. And that’s not including the countless years of time in college, and doing personal/independent research, simply because a fancy new technology captured my ADHD hyperfocus.
I’ve gone from being a novice with a technology, discussing it with someone who seems to know a lot about the topic, to researching everything about it, and the next time I meet them, they don’t have half of the knowledge of the subject that I do by that point. It happens… A lot.
If you don’t want a lecture, and just want things to work stop asking questions, just tell me what you expect as the outcome and I’ll figure out everything in-between.
But this kind of sounds exactly like the rationale these tech bros use to claim they know more than everyone and “these plebs just don’t understand”
Tech Bros drive me up the wall.
Generally they’re users with just enough information to be dangerous.
They know some things, but don’t have a knowledge deep enough to know that there are serious downsides to (insert whatever they care about this week here).
I’m pretty sure I’d be more neckbeard nerd than techbro.
“Hey Windows won’t let me…”
No, it’s actually me who doesn’t let anyone on the network do that. For a reason.
Yup. Most of the time, policies are in place because someone tried what you’re trying and it let them do that thing… And because Windows let that thing happen, something bad happened for everyone.
So now nobody can do that thing.
The prosumer tech bro that’s never touched enterprise equipment or dealt with operational requirements are the worst.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that something works fine at their home but doesn’t work while they’re at work. Sometimes that’s intentional, sometimes that’s because the network in the office is about 80,000x more complex than the Linksys you plugged in at home, set a password on once that you immediately forgot, and has been doing little more than source Nat and L2 bridging every since, with no regard to what the traffic is, just sending it out regardless, and creating a goddamned mess in the process, but because it’s only you and your spouse and maybe a kid or two, that doesn’t really matter.
Suddenly when you’re dealing with hundreds of endpoints on a LAN, you don’t want every broadcast packet being sent out over the dozens of access points you have dotted around, so no, your multicast discovery won’t work Brenda. So you can’t use Chromecast in the office, okay? I don’t care how important you think it is, it would take hours to get this to work properly and I have more pressing concerns at the moment.
I used to work a little bit of IT-support for my city and this made me have flashbacks.
Another stereotype besides the techbro is the graphic designer gal.
Regards we once drove through the city to plug her scanner in… after we prodigiously made her make sure all the wires are connected.
Not exactly the same level of issue but it’s just something I’ll never forget. And nowadays it would be a completely understandable mistake to make, as USB’s can actually power things. But not in 2006, lol.
Oh heck. I can’t recall the number of times someone, even myself, has driven significant distances just to plug things in because users are to much of window lickers to understand what a USB cable looks like half the time.
One of the funniest that I still regularly encounter is people who power cycle their monitor to reboot their computer. Not realizing that the monitor isn’t the computer itself…
I mean, the list goes on and on and on for this kind of stupid shit. The kicker is that if you even fucking try to make them slightly less goddamned stupid about this shit, they don’t want to hear it.
You’ll be taking at them and you might as well be taking to the fucking wall for all the good it will do.
