I posted this comment a week ago, but figured I'd share it here as well.
I'm an IT consultant and I had a meeting with AWS yesterday. My manager asked me to give the AWS team an overview of our solution so they could see what they could use for a new program they were pitching our clients. That's all the information I had, so I started the meeting by saying "I'm not sure what you all are proposing, so I'm going to give you a high level but please let me know where you need more details."
After I had finished giving my overview, I tried to get more info out of them about what they were proposing to build. I shit you not, their response was that they wanted to "build an app that allowed the business to run with AI and ML (Machine Learning).”
They didn't say, "we want to solve X and Y problems" or "enable Z functionality." Literally their entire goal was to build something with AI. I'm glad I wasn't on camera or in person, because I literally face-palmed.
I had a meeting with a c-suite type from one of our clients about ten years ago. He had just read an article about APIs and wanted to find out from me how his company could start using them. His company's back end was basically nothing but APIs. This made me lose the last modicum of respect I had for c-suite types, shocking because I don't know why I even still had that modicum left.
TBF that guy's primary responsibility was to look good in a suit (or a tech vest) and help secure the next round of venture capital funds. Not anything that I was good at.
The problem is that there’s too many employees drawing a salary brining down shareholder value and they want to get rid of as many of them as they can. /s