Re: The ones that really bother me. . ..
And then you find out about the ridiculous fees that the pimps charge companies that they procure for. . . . .
And then you start to wonder if you are doing it right.
I had a boss some years back, a nice and genuinely funny person, only, he never did any work, every, did not know anything in depth. He was not stupid, he just wasn't interested. His colleagues and minions did the work, which was mostly technical reports, seminars and presentations.
His actual job / career, as far as I could work out, was "project maker". The pattern is that he would set up some "stakeholder group" shadowing some corporate- or government- initiatives, get some really strange people involved, and yet (or maybe because), often attract some lush funding that he would burn through in some years with not much beyond PowerPoint ever delivered. When one ore was mined, he would sniff out another one.
There *was* real skill involved, in getting paid very well and not actually doing very much besides mingling, conferencing and entertaining. And of course luring academics in to write quite convincing case studies for "the experience". And a sprinkling of some cray-crays and misfits to show Diversity or Whatever the funding selection criteria says is double-plus gooder.
The Perfect Person to kick off a world-changing "Small, Modular, Molten Salt Reactor"-consortium.