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>The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness The industry (tech, startups, VC money) do bring bullshit to the f

>The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness The industry (tech, startups, VC money) do bring bullshit to the front of the industry consciousness. I’ve never seen another industry push and promote “fake it till you make it” so hard. Democratizing this...disrupting that...we respect your privacy and data...DAO/code is law...Self driving cars...uber is creating good jobs...Fyre fest...VR/AR...Theranos From top down the industry promotes bullshitters.

kuzehanka 7y ago
I always interpreted 'fake it till you make it' as 'promise what you could do with sufficient resources'. That is fundamentally different from people who just make up random shit that sounds good to whoever has money, without any idea or plans to materialise it or whether it's even possible. You do raise a good point with Uber/theranos/dao.
- mwfunk 7y ago
  "Fake it till you make it" means, sound like you're way more confident about what you're saying than you actually are, until you become the sort of person you're presenting yourself as. It's not people making up random shit, it's people making up totally plausible sounding shit.
  - bradjohnson 7y ago
    If the ones that are buying that shit don't know enough about how it works, it's not that difficult for a bullshitter to make the implausible sound plausible.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    "Fake it tll you make it" was also a saying to counteract the impostor syndrome telling themselves that 'theyre worthless, cant do anything, know nothing, etc' Bullshitters never really followed this. It's the Trump game. Keep talking, making stuff up, while moving faster in the direction you want. And it's too hard to keep up, so implicitly people believe portions of it.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  I interpret it as in hang on, keep on doing what you're doing and some patterns will emerge, you'll cut through the noise, etc.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  "Fake it till you make it" is often about jumping at a market opportunity on borrowed time, money, or experience. Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it.
  - bartread 7y ago
    > Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it. That's actually an interesting case because, although he didn't have MS BASIC at that point, he knew he'd be able to deliver it by the time he needed it. So, was he really faking it?
    - TimTheTinker 7y ago
      I just looked this up. According to Wikipedia, Gates called MITS and offered to demonstrate an implementation of Altair BASIC in roughly 8 weeks. He used those 8 weeks to implement it. So I was wrong - he didn't license it, but merely scheduled a demo, before it existed.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Or like Bill Gates selling MSDOS (based on CP/M) to IBM
- icedchai 7y ago
  It's a very blurry line between "insufficient resources" and "making stuff up." Everything is easy when you're not the one doing the work.
- gooseus 7y ago
  I'm sure that's what every person who deploys that phrase tells themselves (and everyone else) that this is what they means. The problem is that when "making it" is a huge long-shot (most tech ideas) and "faking it" is really easy (most tech ideas) then you end up with a whole lot of fakes that never make and a bunch of people who either need to come to grips with the fact that they are basically frauds or who will simply spin it as a "learning experience" and use their failure to promote themselves as having "made it", since who has ever made it without making a few mistakes, right? Accountability is the big problem, but I also think that the superficiality of relationships is another big contributor. It's the same as accountability, really, just on a different scale and it's done before the "fraud". I once went through an LGA (large group awareness) program where a part of it was about having small teams and buddies keeping each other accountable to their personal goals. There was a phrase that came out of that when people who were supposed to be holding each others accountable would both fail in their goals because neither wanted to call the other person out for fear of being called out themselves, or out of a sense of hypocrisy for giving someone shit when they had not finishing their own goals. This was called "Cosigning each others bullshit" and I think it's what happens more often than not in high level business/political dealings. We'd have a lot less high-profile fraud/incompetence cases if more people had the courage to keep other people honest before it got to that point.
  - clairity 7y ago
    it's very socially and economically costly to keep other people accountable, so most people lack the fortitude to do so. this is why we have so many hero myths/stories, to valorize those few people brave enough to pay those costs for the rest of us. that esteem bestowed is one of the few ways we can repay the costs (if only incompletely) that "heroes" incur for us.
  - spaced-out 7y ago
    An uncomfortable truth about our society is that if you get rich by faking it, then you really have made it.
devonkim 7y ago
A colleague of mine put the problem more succinctly “what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?” Most executives in finance have done some form of financial analysis and reporting, construction company owners have almost always done a hard day’s worth of labor, and a lot of directors have had to do some acting / camera work and whatnot. In tech (especially enterprise business verticals) your typical CEO outside Silicon Valley hasn’t ever written a line of code or had to deliver a software project of substantial size. Many are salesmen, marketers, consultants, politicians, etc. and the technology and how it works is just an afterthought. It’s as if executing on the technology is a complete afterthought to investors and frankly they may be right - the barrier to succeed in most enterprise software is probably not your technology as much as how entrenched you already are in the industry you’re working in. This oftentimes bleeds over into supposed tech companies like IBM and HP - your customer base and partners infects your company culture from the top down and drives out engineers. Engineers are far too often excluded because “they’re too pessimistic” and yet every other time I hear about dismissing engineers’ concerns I also hear about tanked projects where it’s a complete mess or situations like the 737 Max. The thing is that the other half is a pretty good gamble.
- komali2 7y ago
  Hmm... The premise is interesting, but c-suites haven't touched the assembly line in many decades, regardless of industry. I have anecdotes of plenty of CEOs from all sorts of industries - ones that never flipped burgers, never played a video game, never pushed steel through a furnace, etc.
- munificent 7y ago
  > “what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?” Isn't the answer... most industries? My understanding is that large companies in all domains are heavily populated with executives and managers who came straight out of business school and into a leadership position. There are those who rise through the rank and file up to the executive position too. I don't know the relative fractions are. But all of those kids who get business and management degrees end up somewhere, right?
Bombthecat 7y ago
Not only promotes, favours, enables and prefer them.
deephony 7y ago
Some thoughts on why this is. With VC the customer is actually future investors, and the true product is a pitch deck. Everything else is a prop. At first this seems crazy, but when you consider wealth inequality it becomes clear that the really money is made convincing very rich people to deploy their capital, not in providing valuable goods or services to workers.
- walterbell 7y ago
  > really money is made convincing very rich people to deploy their capital The industry could use more literature on the "court politics" of this process, including what happens socially if you lose the capital of those rich people, have a disagreement on strategic direction, or partner with rich people who themselves disagree on direction.
misterman0 7y ago
>> push and promote “fake it till you make it” Causality then render a situation where bullshitters have now gotten so good at faking it that buyers of tech are simply herrings among hungry dolphins. Bullshitters in our industry have united and made it impossible for buyers (herrings) to see any other choice but to become swallowed as a meal. So they try their best to choose the very best dolphin to be swallowed by. And then they are swallowed. Because: - founders (who are bullshitters) will hire other bullshitters - the world is saturated with flawed, illogical messages and we have become used to it Solution: - stand the F up on every meeting where you hear BS, and call "shenanigans"!.
- gooseus 7y ago
  "If you see fraud and do not say fraud, then you are a fraud." - NNT Still something I'm trying to live up to and it's much easier said than done... likely there is a selection mechanism in these organizations where anyone with the courage to do that is recognized and passed over early, or else is removed as soon as they do this.
  - misterman0 7y ago
    >> likely there is a selection mechanism in these organizations There is definitely such a thing as a "selection mechanism" and it lives within every organisation. In the best of worlds people would be selected for X. X is not: - feeding the "growth economy" - attribute to "the growth of the market" - "become a unicorn" - destroying wealth, and by wealth I mean "nature" - delegating responsibility not to yourself and your peers but to your offspring I have no idea what X is and you know what, who cares? Who are we to strive for being the "best of worlds"? We haven't even gotten past the notion of being the "best of nations".
- maze-le 7y ago
  >> Solution: >> - stand the F up on every meeting where you hear BS, and call "shenanigans"!. Great way to get yourself sidelined in the near future, and not being able to intervene when it will be your job to implement a fantasy... The problem with being honest in a situation like this is, that it will disrupt everyone in that meeting, not just the bullshitter. You'll be perceived as a fire starter and the next meeting will likely take place without you -- organizations at a certain size can be very flexible this way. Or worse: They retaliate. Bullshitters are usually good at manipulating peoples perceptions. Once they feel threatened, they are likely to respond (in a way, you'll probably lose, since they can dictate the turf and the weapons). A way I found to deal with a situation like this is: Try to gouge the impressions of the other participants of the meeting -- cigarette breaks are perfect for this kind of "talk in private". Try to figure out if they also found this or that aspect of the meeting a bit odd. If it is so (and it very likely is) call out the BS for what it is, but don't be too bold about it and focus on one - two key aspects, not more. You are usually not alone in your perception of bullshittery and others are probably aware of it in one way or another. It can be a real eye-opener to them that they are not alone in thinking that, was was talked about before was a bit... exaggerated. Once they are aware they might percieve this notion in other aspects of the work of said bullshitter and it gets harder for them to get away with it. I have to say, I have only limited experience with roles in higher management. Usally the higher up the food-chain, the better the bullshitters and the better the strategies and tactics of them -- it might not work that way when you are up against a hierarchy of self-proclaimed experts. But in smaller organizations and "everyday"-meeting that are somewhere "near production", this is a valid tactic, that has never failed me thus far. ----- Gosh how I hate this form of office-politics...
d883kd8 7y ago
How tf is Fyre Fest on the tech industry, that was 100% entertainment and hospitality.
- brohee 7y ago
  Completely fueled by Instagram tho. It's on the tech industry the same way Trump election is on Facebook.
  - spaced-out 7y ago
    The tech industry is also responsible for ISIS, since they use social media a lot.

kuzehanka 7y ago

I always interpreted 'fake it till you make it' as 'promise what you could do with sufficient resources'. That is fundamentally different from people who just make up random shit that sounds good to whoever has money, without any idea or plans to materialise it or whether it's even possible. You do raise a good point with Uber/theranos/dao.

mwfunk 7y ago
"Fake it till you make it" means, sound like you're way more confident about what you're saying than you actually are, until you become the sort of person you're presenting yourself as. It's not people making up random shit, it's people making up totally plausible sounding shit.
- bradjohnson 7y ago
  If the ones that are buying that shit don't know enough about how it works, it's not that difficult for a bullshitter to make the implausible sound plausible.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  "Fake it tll you make it" was also a saying to counteract the impostor syndrome telling themselves that 'theyre worthless, cant do anything, know nothing, etc' Bullshitters never really followed this. It's the Trump game. Keep talking, making stuff up, while moving faster in the direction you want. And it's too hard to keep up, so implicitly people believe portions of it.
onemoresoop 7y ago
I interpret it as in hang on, keep on doing what you're doing and some patterns will emerge, you'll cut through the noise, etc.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
"Fake it till you make it" is often about jumping at a market opportunity on borrowed time, money, or experience. Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it.
- bartread 7y ago
  > Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it. That's actually an interesting case because, although he didn't have MS BASIC at that point, he knew he'd be able to deliver it by the time he needed it. So, was he really faking it?
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    I just looked this up. According to Wikipedia, Gates called MITS and offered to demonstrate an implementation of Altair BASIC in roughly 8 weeks. He used those 8 weeks to implement it. So I was wrong - he didn't license it, but merely scheduled a demo, before it existed.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Or like Bill Gates selling MSDOS (based on CP/M) to IBM
icedchai 7y ago
It's a very blurry line between "insufficient resources" and "making stuff up." Everything is easy when you're not the one doing the work.
gooseus 7y ago
I'm sure that's what every person who deploys that phrase tells themselves (and everyone else) that this is what they means. The problem is that when "making it" is a huge long-shot (most tech ideas) and "faking it" is really easy (most tech ideas) then you end up with a whole lot of fakes that never make and a bunch of people who either need to come to grips with the fact that they are basically frauds or who will simply spin it as a "learning experience" and use their failure to promote themselves as having "made it", since who has ever made it without making a few mistakes, right? Accountability is the big problem, but I also think that the superficiality of relationships is another big contributor. It's the same as accountability, really, just on a different scale and it's done before the "fraud". I once went through an LGA (large group awareness) program where a part of it was about having small teams and buddies keeping each other accountable to their personal goals. There was a phrase that came out of that when people who were supposed to be holding each others accountable would both fail in their goals because neither wanted to call the other person out for fear of being called out themselves, or out of a sense of hypocrisy for giving someone shit when they had not finishing their own goals. This was called "Cosigning each others bullshit" and I think it's what happens more often than not in high level business/political dealings. We'd have a lot less high-profile fraud/incompetence cases if more people had the courage to keep other people honest before it got to that point.
- clairity 7y ago
  it's very socially and economically costly to keep other people accountable, so most people lack the fortitude to do so. this is why we have so many hero myths/stories, to valorize those few people brave enough to pay those costs for the rest of us. that esteem bestowed is one of the few ways we can repay the costs (if only incompletely) that "heroes" incur for us.
- spaced-out 7y ago
  An uncomfortable truth about our society is that if you get rich by faking it, then you really have made it.

devonkim 7y ago

A colleague of mine put the problem more succinctly “what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?” Most executives in finance have done some form of financial analysis and reporting, construction company owners have almost always done a hard day’s worth of labor, and a lot of directors have had to do some acting / camera work and whatnot. In tech (especially enterprise business verticals) your typical CEO outside Silicon Valley hasn’t ever written a line of code or had to deliver a software project of substantial size. Many are salesmen, marketers, consultants, politicians, etc. and the technology and how it works is just an afterthought. It’s as if executing on the technology is a complete afterthought to investors and frankly they may be right - the barrier to succeed in most enterprise software is probably not your technology as much as how entrenched you already are in the industry you’re working in. This oftentimes bleeds over into supposed tech companies like IBM and HP - your customer base and partners infects your company culture from the top down and drives out engineers. Engineers are far too often excluded because “they’re too pessimistic” and yet every other time I hear about dismissing engineers’ concerns I also hear about tanked projects where it’s a complete mess or situations like the 737 Max. The thing is that the other half is a pretty good gamble.

komali2 7y ago
Hmm... The premise is interesting, but c-suites haven't touched the assembly line in many decades, regardless of industry. I have anecdotes of plenty of CEOs from all sorts of industries - ones that never flipped burgers, never played a video game, never pushed steel through a furnace, etc.
munificent 7y ago
> “what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?” Isn't the answer... most industries? My understanding is that large companies in all domains are heavily populated with executives and managers who came straight out of business school and into a leadership position. There are those who rise through the rank and file up to the executive position too. I don't know the relative fractions are. But all of those kids who get business and management degrees end up somewhere, right?

Bombthecat 7y ago

Not only promotes, favours, enables and prefer them.

deephony 7y ago

Some thoughts on why this is. With VC the customer is actually future investors, and the true product is a pitch deck. Everything else is a prop. At first this seems crazy, but when you consider wealth inequality it becomes clear that the really money is made convincing very rich people to deploy their capital, not in providing valuable goods or services to workers.

walterbell 7y ago
> really money is made convincing very rich people to deploy their capital The industry could use more literature on the "court politics" of this process, including what happens socially if you lose the capital of those rich people, have a disagreement on strategic direction, or partner with rich people who themselves disagree on direction.

misterman0 7y ago

>> push and promote “fake it till you make it” Causality then render a situation where bullshitters have now gotten so good at faking it that buyers of tech are simply herrings among hungry dolphins. Bullshitters in our industry have united and made it impossible for buyers (herrings) to see any other choice but to become swallowed as a meal. So they try their best to choose the very best dolphin to be swallowed by. And then they are swallowed. Because: - founders (who are bullshitters) will hire other bullshitters - the world is saturated with flawed, illogical messages and we have become used to it Solution: - stand the F up on every meeting where you hear BS, and call "shenanigans"!.

gooseus 7y ago
"If you see fraud and do not say fraud, then you are a fraud." - NNT Still something I'm trying to live up to and it's much easier said than done... likely there is a selection mechanism in these organizations where anyone with the courage to do that is recognized and passed over early, or else is removed as soon as they do this.
- misterman0 7y ago
  >> likely there is a selection mechanism in these organizations There is definitely such a thing as a "selection mechanism" and it lives within every organisation. In the best of worlds people would be selected for X. X is not: - feeding the "growth economy" - attribute to "the growth of the market" - "become a unicorn" - destroying wealth, and by wealth I mean "nature" - delegating responsibility not to yourself and your peers but to your offspring I have no idea what X is and you know what, who cares? Who are we to strive for being the "best of worlds"? We haven't even gotten past the notion of being the "best of nations".
maze-le 7y ago
>> Solution: >> - stand the F up on every meeting where you hear BS, and call "shenanigans"!. Great way to get yourself sidelined in the near future, and not being able to intervene when it will be your job to implement a fantasy... The problem with being honest in a situation like this is, that it will disrupt everyone in that meeting, not just the bullshitter. You'll be perceived as a fire starter and the next meeting will likely take place without you -- organizations at a certain size can be very flexible this way. Or worse: They retaliate. Bullshitters are usually good at manipulating peoples perceptions. Once they feel threatened, they are likely to respond (in a way, you'll probably lose, since they can dictate the turf and the weapons). A way I found to deal with a situation like this is: Try to gouge the impressions of the other participants of the meeting -- cigarette breaks are perfect for this kind of "talk in private". Try to figure out if they also found this or that aspect of the meeting a bit odd. If it is so (and it very likely is) call out the BS for what it is, but don't be too bold about it and focus on one - two key aspects, not more. You are usually not alone in your perception of bullshittery and others are probably aware of it in one way or another. It can be a real eye-opener to them that they are not alone in thinking that, was was talked about before was a bit... exaggerated. Once they are aware they might percieve this notion in other aspects of the work of said bullshitter and it gets harder for them to get away with it. I have to say, I have only limited experience with roles in higher management. Usally the higher up the food-chain, the better the bullshitters and the better the strategies and tactics of them -- it might not work that way when you are up against a hierarchy of self-proclaimed experts. But in smaller organizations and "everyday"-meeting that are somewhere "near production", this is a valid tactic, that has never failed me thus far. ----- Gosh how I hate this form of office-politics...

d883kd8 7y ago

How tf is Fyre Fest on the tech industry, that was 100% entertainment and hospitality.

brohee 7y ago
Completely fueled by Instagram tho. It's on the tech industry the same way Trump election is on Facebook.
- spaced-out 7y ago
  The tech industry is also responsible for ISIS, since they use social media a lot.