You make really good points about the strength in seeing patterns. Two patterns you refer to that I “see holes in” is DevOps (there are better ways to discuss the jumble of concepts than the habit of people randomly assigning every possible improvement in software development to “devops”) ….and secondly, this lack of clarity and sophistication in language leads exactly to the sloppy thinking and sloppy statements that your speaker made about “empathy”. People (and especially Professionals!) need to learn A LOT more about terms and concepts and not just assume they can learn new things by hanging one more ornament on the DevOps christmas tree.