The Tech Industry's Recurring "Get Rich Quick" Playbook

How Companies Manufacture Job Titles to Build Sales Armies

A pattern I've witnessed repeat across 15 years in tech, and why you should be skeptical of the latest career "opportunity."

The Promise

Scroll through LinkedIn and you'll see them: slick posts promising you can make $100k with "just a few workflows." Join this course, learn this tool, and you too can become a "GTM Engineer" or whatever the latest hot title happens to be.

The problem? Most of these influencers have never actually done the work they're selling. They got lucky, spotted a trend, and are now capitalizing on your career anxiety.

I've watched this exact playbook unfold multiple times over the past 15 years, since the start of the “Shadow IT” trend. The current wave around n8n, Clay, and the "GTM Engineer" phenomenon has given me a fresh perspective on how sophisticated (and damaging) this cycle has become.

The Playbook: How Companies Manufacture Expertise

Here's how it works, step by step:

Stage 1: Early Success

A company launches and starts landing customers. Sales are good, but there's a problem—customers need constant hand-holding to unlock the product's "full potential."

Stage 2: The Title Invention

To augment its implementation partners, the company invents a new job category. "Salesforce Administrator." "CPQ Architect." "GTM Engineer." They position this as a revolutionary new way of working.

What's really happening: They're planting sales agents in customer organizations without anyone realizing it.

Stage 3: The Recruitment

The company recruits operators and pushes positioning through partner channels. They build social presence—they're the cool new kids disrupting everything.

Stage 4: The Loyalty Engine

The people hired into these roles become emotionally invested. The vendor gave them their career, so they champion every new feature. They create content for free. They recruit friends into the "movement."

Stage 5: Legitimacy Through Certification

Certifications roll out. Now it's official; there are "professionals" who need "education." The company gains street credibility and an army of implementers.

Stage 6: The Ecosystem

An entire economy springs up: certification trainers, "make $200k as a consultancy" courses, and content creators. We see course after course spin up to prepare people for the certifications at stage 5. We see test dumps emerge and companies selling prep materials. Consultancies abound to help you implement, maintain, and optimize.

Everyone's making money, everyone's invested in the flywheel.

The Inevitable Crash

Years pass. The company goes public, and the founders get rich. Quality degrades as focus shifts from product to revenue. Prices increase. The tool becomes increasingly difficult to use as it goes up market and the company chases revenue generating features, what was once easy now requires workarounds.

The market saturates. Jobs disappear. But nobody blames the hypesters who oversold the opportunity.

The victims? People who believed they could career-switch into something transformational, only to find themselves holding certificates for roles that no longer exist, salaries plummeting, or never really existed in the first place.

Current Example: The "GTM Engineer"

Take a closer look at the "GTM Engineer" trend. Notice how:

• No two job descriptions match: the role is completely nebulous

• No standards exist for what constitutes "engineering excellence" in this context

• The influencers promoting it often lack actual engineering or GTM experience

• It's rebranded work that Growth Hackers, MarTech engineers, and RevOps teams have done for years, but now it’s accessible to the masses through AI and an intuitive canvas.

• The term ‘Engineer’ is about as nebulous as the term ‘Operations’

Real engineering isn't about automating things.

Red Flags: How to Spot the Frauds

Check their background:

• Does their job history actually include the role they're teaching?

  • Do they walk the walk or only talk the talk?

• Is their profile littered with hype?

• Are they capitalizing on a trend without relevant experience?

• Do they only promote one vendor's approach?

Question the narrative:

• Are they acknowledging cheaper, open-source alternatives?

• Do they discuss failure modes and challenges?

• Is their content overly focused on income potential?

Look at the ecosystem:

• Is there a certification program that launched suspiciously quickly?

• Are there suddenly dozens of "experts" with similar messaging?

• Does criticism get dismissed rather than addressed?

The Human Cost

This isn't just about bad career advice. Real people make major life decisions based on these manufactured opportunities. They:

• Leave stable careers for trending roles

• Pay thousands for courses and certifications

• Build identities around tools that may not survive market shifts

• Face career disruption when the bubble bursts

What Companies Won't Tell You

The alternatives exist. For every hyped tool, there are usually:

• Open-source options that cost nothing

• Established enterprise solutions with proven track records

• Simpler approaches that don't require specialized roles

• Skills that you can acquire and apply across various domains.

But acknowledging this doesn't serve the vendors' motivation to create dependency.

Moving Forward

I'm not saying all new job categories are scams; genuine innovation does create new roles. But approach the hype with healthy skepticism:

• Demand substance over flash: Look for detailed case studies, not just income promises

• Seek diverse perspectives: Find practitioners who aren't selling something

• Question the timeline: Sustainable careers aren't built in months

• Value transferable skills over vendor-specific expertise

The "get rich quick" mafia will move on to the next trend when this one burns out. Make sure you're not left holding the bag.

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Have you witnessed this pattern in your industry? The cycle continues because it works, but only for the people at the top, or those who get in early.