> Cloud had a very similar vibe when it was really running advertising to CIO/CTOs hard. Everything had to be jammed into the cloud, even if it made absolutely no sense for it to be run there.

100% accurate - some of us are old enough to have lived through a few of the mini-revolutions in between the mega-revolutions of Internet/Web in the 1990s and now AI/LLM in the 2020s.

We are in the "stupid phase" of adoption still. C-level people have to follow the herd and they are being evaluated on keeping up with everyone else. Idiotic mandates are a way to cause things to happen short-term even though everyone knows long-term it will have to be re-done.

Consultants gonna make a looooooooot of money this coming decade.

I think the feel bad moment here is how impersonal everything got in 3 decades. During the dotcom bust you still had to meet and talk to people to get interviews started.

Now you can make a perfectly tailored resume, apply to 50 jobs in a day, and it's not unexpected to not get any response from those in 2 weeks. You don't know if it's your resume, the company, or the economy. And no one wants to admit the latter two are problems.

Not to mention the utter disrespect these days. There's no decorum in many of these "professional" settings, when normally you want your interview process to show off your best face.