Ask HN: Who are the "snake oil salesmen" of tech?

[syndicatedjelly]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snake%20oil

snake oil (noun):

1: any of various substances or mixtures sold (as by a traveling medicine show) as medicine usually without regard to their medical worth or properties

2: poppycock, bunkum

Who are these people, companies, entities etc. in the tech world?

[eimrine]

So sorry to observe Blockchain tech/ppl as a perfect example of a snake oil / snake oil sellers. I can clearly see a big future on this field, kind of a Democracy 2.0, the "short script which is going to replace all the governments".

But the myriad of dudes who don't know even the very basics of cryptography but having some excellent sales skills make me feel sad sometimes.

[PM_me_your_math]

Democracy is hell on earth. Whether it is a system of government, or a means by which groups make decisions or peddles their wares. The majority tends to encumber, enslave, and/or murder the minority. The eventual outcome of any purely democratic state or process is tyranny. This is why the founding fathers choose a republican form of government that uses democratic processes. Recall that Socrates was sentenced to die by a majority vote. With that in mind, then yes, the faux value assigned to "tech influencers" is a form of democracy that's just as poisonous as people who seek to "save democracy."

[coldtrait]

Are you a Balaji S fan?

[rl1987]

Agile coaches who never wrote a single line of code. Blockchain people. Coding bootcamps and content/course creators promising unrealistic timelines to developer jobs. Pretty much anyone talking like they just made OVER-9000-DOLLARS(!!!) in a week with ChatGPT/Midjourney/Bitcoin/affiliate marketing/whatever the latest fad is. To lesser degree consumer grade VPN companies.

[dcminter]

"Agile coaches who never wrote a single line of code."

Hard disagree here. Of the agile coaches I've bumped into over the last decade or so the most excellent one I worked with was entirely non-techy and made a dramatic difference to the quality of the team.

[gnz11]

I suppose McKinsey could fit the bill and much of the tech consulting world for that matter. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AiOUojVd6xQ

[Vaslo]

Underrated comment. McKinseys delivery to price ratio is very poor. We get a slick talking salesman and then smart but underprepared analysts, at least for we should be getting for that price!

[twright]

A fun search I do is “McKinsey estimates” and see some bonkers numbers about hyped things that never really took off, at least nowhere to the degree they estimate.

[mawadev]

Low code and no code tools claiming it's over for programmers

[cpach]

If you look in blockchain, antivirus or AI, you’ll find heaps of snake oil salesmen.

[pawelduda]

Why antivirus?

[tacostakohashi]

Vendors of elaborate, configurable, "enterprise" tools for software development and monitoring.

JIRA, SonarQube, VeraCode, Coverity - all these apps that seem like a good idea in principle, but end up being misconfigured with complicated workflows, and generally get in the way of ever making changes to software and get used to tick the security box instead of actually fixing anything.

[yevyevyev]

Web3 aka distributed ledger aka blockchain

[coldtrait]

People are still grifting in this space and I hear these guys on twitter talking about how they made six figures working in web3/dao/whateve buzzword

[joegahona]

Most SEO tools or “experts” are snake oil.

[samstave]

Social Media Influencers - and the platforms they ~~rode~~ wrote in on.

[8BitArmour]

techlead,joma tech,99pc of Indian YouTubers,people who gaurantee you a job after buying a course,scaler academy

[coldtrait]

Most of tech and Indian tech space these days seems like it

[petabyt]

Oh yeah the Ex google ex Facebook ex Amazon tech lead

[lurn_mor]

The ones we've already caught and convicted: FTX, Theranos, ...

[mharig]

Microsoft

Selling a gaming OS as a tool for companies.

[mlhpdx]

Basically all consumer security apps?

[Ekaros]

Anyone selling anything at all...

[rasz]

IBM Watson

[pg_1234]

Crypto bros

[mikewarot]

Anyone who pitches a "safer" computer language, or methodology. Rust, for example.

People who sell memory that they know is unreliable, otherwise RowHammer[1] wouldn't work

Most of the "CyberSecurity" industry... the Operating System should be doing their job, but isn't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer

[NukedOne]

It's wildly insulting, defamatory, and detached from all reality on several levels, to classify Rust as snake oil.

[an-account]

Not a memory development guy, but I am a rust programmer and have managed cybersecurity teams. Rust is amazing for memory safety and good programing practice. And cyber… is a lot more than the OS.

[Exuma]

Imagine an idea more detached from reality than yours. Wow.