I've noticed a trend in software engineering over the last few decades: the ascendency of a class I call the 'flashocracy' - leadership by quick answers and hyper-confidence, sometimes of style over substance.

Author Robert Persig, in the classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, identified a similar trend in modern urban culture decades ago - he called it the "hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life". ⇒ Read more