Good and better ways of extracting simplicity

Summary for the impatient

If your solution to a complex problem makes things simpler for you by making it harder for somebody else, you’re probably doing it wrong. I’m looking at you, VXLAN.

Sunday Rant: Dear $Vendor, your marketing pitch sucks

In my day job I get exposed to Vendor marketing pitches a fair bit. It can be in person one on one or at a conference, or it can be through marketing reading material; but there appears to be one common theme: they all, almost without exception, focus on the product they’re trying to sell, and its features.

In other words, they are dumping on me a solution, while doing almost nothing to help me to understand whether the problem they’re addressing is relevant to us and our customers. The included obligatory “problem statements”, almost without exception, are too high-level unspecific and do not answer this. And this is just wrong.