I’ve seen this in person.

It reminds me of the days when I worked in corporate America. As a whole, management were the biggest marks for con artists. I’ve sat in on interviews with people who were clearly unqualified for the jobs they were applying for. The regular employees could spot the con in an instant.

Absolutely true. I was in a meeting with some vendor (essentially, an interview) where we were assessing them on the way to hiring for some major work. This vendor’s reps were appallingly clueless. Just terrible — and rude. My colleague and I were literally laughing in their faces as they were so obnoxiously ridiculous and their claims for what their product could do were simply absurd. I mean that, and am not exaggerating: we were laughing at them openly and making fun of them, and I was two seconds away from asking them to leave and to quit wasting my time.

Then one of the managers waved her hands to quiet me, as I was getting increasingly agitated about it all, and announced how fabulously brilliant she thought it all sounded, and would they be able to start soon?

I was flabbergasted. But these dudes were speaking MBA-ese, and it was incredibly effective. Nothing I said could overrule the MBA vibes permeating the room.

And the project? Oh yeah, it completely failed. Like, tanked so hard not even James Cameron’s submersibles can find it. Not because I sabotaged it — I unsabotaged it. After the first vendor (the MBA-friendly one) was unable to deliver really anything at all, I did half of the project myself, and called in a favor from an old IT contact of mine who finished the rest. There went a few hundred thousand down the drain.