Delusions of our time
We as an industry are in a period of mass delusion. I want to talk briefly about 3 things that scare me.
1. Unicorns
The idea that a company that has 30m in revenue is valued at over a Billion dollars is a mass delusion. Or worse yet, companies that are borderline illegal being valued at multi-billion dollars.
I have seen many arguments on why this time is different. These arguments are the same I heard before dotcom bust.
Reality will catch up with Unicorns and they will crash hard. Its not a question of if they will crash, its a matter of when.
Most large VCs are playing the game of Russian Roulette with the money just for the thrill of it. As someone said, valley has no concept of fear now, and the shock of a crash would lead some VCs to go into serious depression. This scenario scares me because it will also kill startup ecosystem.
2. Private Cloud
Insanity is defined as doing same thing again under different name and expecting different results. Private Cloud is just a new label applied to same old data center technology. People expect that they suddenly achieve elastic resources and unlimited scalability with redoing what they did in early 2000s again.
The people approving multi-million dollar private cloud build out projects probably know that they aren't being honest with themselves or with their company and are putting everyone at risk of being over budget and out of a job when reality hits hard.
Building a new DC is not right for majority of companies except may be for the Fortune 100 and large technology vendors out there.
The reality will catch up and we will have failed projects and the question of “Is IT good for anything really?” resurfaces with vigor and energy.
3. DevOps
“One weird trick that gives you six pack Abs”
The people that used to write these ad copies are now writing DevOps ad copies.
While the original intent of DevOps is still very valuable, it has been hijacked by people looking to make a quick buck. They promise that DevOps will fix all your communication issues and will help you become an Unicorn.
The unfortunate thing is that some people I spoke to in IT actually believe this. They think getting their staff certified in DevOps is a path to success. People are busy changing their job titles to include “DevOps” in it. For ex: Director of “DevOps” Project Manager.
This unfortunately will stay with us for a decade or more. The failures won’t be visible immediately because its easy for proponents to say you haven’t been enough DevOpsy. The most likely way the failures from “One weird trick” DevOps is going to be that of the companies buying “DevOps implementation services”.
Thats all folks — when I look to the future, these are the things that scare me. What scares you?
