Veteran Engineer Decries Decades of Tech Hype Cycles as Corporate BS

A veteran Red Hat engineer with nearly four decades of industry experience has delivered a scathing critique of modern technology hype cycles, labeling prominent trends from cloud computing to generative AI as "corporate bullshit" driven by marketing rather than technical merit. The anonymous engineer's analysis, shared during CentOS Connect 2026, identifies six major waves of inflated expectations that have dominated enterprise IT since the early 2000s.

The Hype Sequence Breakdown

1. Containers: While acknowledging containers' utility for testing, the engineer contends they're unnecessary for production deployment. "Anything you run in a container can run on bare metal," the engineer stated, adding that deployment complexity indicates deeper competency issues. Linux containers (LXC) debuted in 2008, with Docker popularizing the approach in 2013.

2. Kubernetes: Dismissed as overkill for most organizations, the engineer advocates the "Use One Big Server" philosophy: "Unless you're a multinational expecting 10 million simultaneous users, Kubernetes solves imaginary problems." The container orchestration platform launched publicly in 2014 after internal use at Google.

3. Cloud Computing: Characterized as "trusting internet randos with your crown jewels," cloud adoption is framed as a fundamental misunderstanding of infrastructure ownership. The engineer reiterated the adage: "There is no cloud—just somebody else's computer." Amazon Web Services pioneered modern cloud infrastructure in 2002.

4. Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS): From IaaS to SaaS, the engineer argues these models create dangerous abstraction layers: "With SaaS, you don't know where your data lives or how it's stored—you're paying for access to your own property." This critique echoes Peter Deutsch's Fallacies of Network Computing from 1994.

5. Blockchain Technologies: Dubbed "the world's slowest distributed database," blockchain applications face particularly harsh criticism. NFTs are described as "URL shorteners that make things longer," while cryptocurrencies are dismissed as industrialized pyramid schemes. Bitcoin's whitepaper emerged in 2008.

6. Generative AI: The current hype cycle receives the most pointed critique, with large language models characterized as "predictive text turned up to 11." The engineer noted dryly: "If bankers can understand it from a single FT article, it's not revolutionary technology." ChatGPT's 2022 public release marked this cycle's mainstream arrival.

Chronology of Hype

The engineer's timeline of tech hype extends beyond 15 years:

• 1999: Salesforce pioneers SaaS
• 2002: AWS launches cloud infrastructure
• 2004: Gmail brings SaaS to consumers
• 2008: LXC containers and Bitcoin emerge
• 2014: Kubernetes debuts
• 2022: ChatGPT triggers AI hype wave

Practical Implications

This critique carries significant weight for enterprise decision-makers:

1. Infrastructure Strategy: Organizations should evaluate whether complexity serves actual needs rather than hypothetical scale
2. Data Sovereignty: Cloud and SaaS adoption requires rigorous assessment of third-party trust models
3. Hype Resistance: Teams should demand demonstrable ROI beyond industry buzzwords

While acknowledging genuine use cases for these technologies, the engineer maintains that marketing departments have systematically exploited technical naivete. "After 38 years," they concluded, "the pattern is unmistakable: solutions chasing problems, funded by venture capital chasing exits." The analysis serves as a cautionary framework for evaluating emerging technologies against core business requirements rather than industry euphoria.