A Baffling Encounter with a Tech Poseur

Social Media has never held all that much attraction for me. At some point, the novelty of interacting with people online turns into the drudgery of interacting with people, period. It was mid 2022 when this random encounter happened on the Clubhouse app, with some dude from Canada.

I introduced myself as a software developer, which seemed to signal to this fella that I needed to be challenged. He asked what I knew about Kubernetes, and when I honestly answered "not a lot", he then openly questioned how I could call myself a software developer and followed up by asking what I knew about SQL.

Again, seeing no reason to even attempt to impress a total stranger online, I said I wouldn't call myself an expert and just used as much as I needed to. This was totally subjective, of course. I know how to perform CRUD operations and database joins, and normalize database structures even if I've long forgotten the formal definition of BCNF. To some people, that would absolutely count as expertise, though I feel obligated to hold myself to higher standards.

In response, he started questioning my dedication to my craft, and this made me suspect that I wasn't speaking to someone who actually worked in tech... because genuine tech workers, even if they lacked humility, would probably have the experience to avoid simplistic (and frankly not terribly clever) snap judgments like these.

Why that was completely stupid

A couple reasons. First of all, Kubernetes isn't what I would call a mainstream tech thing. It's more of a DevOps thing, which still makes it a software tech discipline, just not first on everyone's to-do list.

A DevOps engineer would totally learn it.

A back-end engineer? Almost definitely.

A full-stack developer? Maybe.

A Data Analyst, Front-end engineer or Network Manager? Doubtful.

So acting like a techie is somehow deficient for not knowing much about it, tells me more about the person making that statement, than the one being judged. This would be as absurd as me mocking back-end engineers for not knowing HTML and CSS. Because, really, why would they? What next? You aren't a real musician if you can't play the zither? You're not a real doctor if you can't extract a tooth?

Real doctors can pull teeth!

Now SQL would be a more mainstream tool than Kubernetes. Regardless of which layer of the stack a tech worker is operating on currently, they would almost be guaranteed to have been taught SQL in school. And even then, plenty of tech workers don't deal with SQL professionally. Even I only really use raw SQL when I'm performing joins in database consoles - for actual software development, it's too much of a security risk and the accepted tools abstract away SQL for library functions.

Also, can I just mention that using Kubernetes and SQL together as a flex, is just kind of odd? Not pineapple-on-pizza weird. Maybe spinach-on-pizza weird.

Genuine Questions...

My industry isn't a circus, so why are we attracting these clowns? We were known as nerds in school. Why are people now so anxious to be be associated with us?

Why these clowns?

Oh, well. It's now 2026. With all the tech layoffs going on, perhaps my industry would have lost enough mystique to no longer produce these groupies.

Also, why does every tech poseur I encounter, feel the need to namedrop Kubernetes? Does it even sound that impressive?

I'm dead serious. Every other guy who tried to impress me with his tech cred, has cited Kubernetes. One even took the pains to explain Kubernetes was a upscaler in cloud infrastructure, as if we couldn't just read that up on its Wikipedia page. I'm not even that offended by the posturing. It's more the low-effort posturing, like I was some noob who can't tell when someone's full of hot air.

There are three situations where Kubernetes might be brought up casually as a subject.

One; DevOps engineers dissecting a scaling problem. Two; backend engineers deep in infra discussion. Three; tech performer using tech buzzwords as a big stick to hammer home the illusion of being technically experienced.

As far as I could tell, this did not fall under the first two categories. The irony is, in his eagerness to perform tech experience, he ended up demonstrating something that few actual software engineers would exhibit - ignorance of tech stacks.

So... what is it about Kubernetes specifically? This stumps me.

Finally

Of course, I don't mind being told I'm not much of a tech. I already don't consider myself exceptional. Although, the judgement might have stung more coming from someone who obviously knew his shit. As it was, it left me somewhat bemused. As a generalist, I didn't feel personally disrespected. But someone who actually spent the sweat and sleepless nights mastering Kubernetes and working with it, might feel quite differently.

It's been four years. Why am I even talking about this now? In truth, I wanted to talk about it way back, but more interesting stuff kept coming up. Plus, I am one hell of a procrastinator. It's a slow news week, so there you go.

How's your Java and JavaScript?
T___T