Silicon Forest Disease

Iowa Andy has been badgering me to "fix" my LinkedIn page. I can't be bothered. I quit using LinkedIn years ago. I thought I deleted my page then, but apparently I failed. I don't care because I don't think I am going to be able to get any kind of programming job in this area, and even if I did, I suspect I would not enjoy it. This whole area I live in is infected with some nefarious disease. "Work" seems to be all about posturing and bullshit. Actual work counts for very little. This should be no surprise, as fortunes have been made on the most feeble of efforts (Quicken & Facebook spring to mind). Why should anyone be interested in working when you can just fall into a pile of money? When I went to work for Intel back in '85, I thought it was an engineering company. Then the PC took off, the x86 business skyrocketed, and the systems division (as opposed to the chip division) became a marketing arm for the chip division. (I think I've probably said this before.)
    For a while then (say '95 to '05), Intel was bizarre place to work. Full of Indian H1-B contractors, sitting quietly in their cubicles, spinning their wheels, producing nothing, but validating their boss's value (he must be important, he has all those people working for him), while all the "players" argued about what was going to be the next big thing, and what they should be working on, and going to meetings with Microsoft about ever more obscure bullshit. A lot like the way National Security has been run since the end of WWII.