Pontificators

Face it - each and every one of us knows one of these "people:" pontificators.

Rather than an intelligent conversation, there is this one-sided pontificating.  These self-important delusionals have no clue as to what is actually being discussed - they are too busy pontificating.

Bell Labs was full of these guys. Let's be real here, a PhD does NOT in any way, shape or form, confer knowledge outside of their well-designed thesis that they chose carefully so that NOBODY would understand what they were talking about, and the evaluators concluded he must be a smarty, so let's give him a PhD. (This is quite similar to political pundits).

On some of the really important projects I worked on, they were the jewels that set our stuff apart from the competition.

However, on other assignments, they seemed to be there to pontificate. If they were out of their comfort zone, they would revert to pontificating, sounding smart, saying nothing useful, and wasting our time.

Fine. I defunded him the next year.