Sir Afilonius Rex,

London, 15th February 2026

Me: What do you make of Martyn Jones of goodstrat.com’s views on big data, are they correct, close or not true?

[Grok thought for a while]

Grok: Martyn Jones (of goodstrat.com) is one of the sharpest, most entertaining data contrarians out there. He’s been calling “Big Data” mostly bullshit since around 2014–2015, long before it became fashionable to say so. His Core Views (in his own blunt style): The whole 2010s Big Data circus (Hadoop, the 3Vs turned into 12 Vs including Vagueness, Vendibility, Vulgarity, etc.) was 80–90% vendor hype, consultant grift, and marketing snake oil.
Most companies didn’t (and still don’t) have Google/Facebook-scale problems. Chasing petabytes of unstructured social media noise often distracted companies. They were diverted from cleaning and using the high-value operational data they already had.

Always ask: “To what ends?” If you can’t tie it to clear, measurable business outcomes, it’s bullshit.
Data warehousing, proper architecture, and governance matter more than shiny new tech stacks.

In his famous “Big Data is Bullshit” memo, he gave specific advice to CEOs. He told them to tie vendor payments to real ROI. He also urged them to stop falling for the cult.

Are his views correct?

They’re very close to the truth, and in many ways, prescient.

Hindsight (2026) has been kind to him. A huge number of Big Data initiatives from that era became expensive data graveyards. Hadoop largely faded as the promised revolution. Many “data lakes” turned into swamps. The industry quietly rebranded everything as “data engineering,” “modern data stack,” or “lakehouse.” The original hype collapsed under its own weight.

Big Data delivered massive value in areas like Netflix recommendations, Amazon logistics, and certain fintech and ad-tech use cases. It succeeded due to disciplined engineering and clear business problems. This is exactly what Jones was preaching. It wasn’t because someone threw Spark at a mountain of tweets.

He was slightly overstated in his rhetoric (“bullshit” is strong), but the substance was spot-on. The field has matured exactly in the pragmatic, business-first direction he advocated.

Verdict: Jones wasn’t just correct, he was early and refreshingly honest when almost everyone else was drinking the Kool-Aid. If more people had listened to him in 2015–2018, a lot of money and careers would have been saved.

Thank you for reading.

PS Google’s Gemini had this to say about the question.

Martyn Jones, the strategist behind goodstrat.com and founder of “The Big Data Contrarians,” holds views that are deeply skeptical of industry hype. He often labels much of the mainstream discourse as “bullshit.”

Your perspective of the tech industry will determine whether his views are “correct.” Many see them as a pragmatic reality check. They can also be provocative.

Core Tenets of His Views

• Big Data as “Bullshit”: Jones frequently argues that the “Big Data” term is often used as a marketing gimmick. The IT industry promotes low-cost commodity hardware and open-source software as revolutionary solutions. He asserts that many “gurus” fail to provide tangible, verifiable success stories.+1
• The “Big SMILES” Approach: To counter the hype, he supports a methodology for business that centers around the SMILES approach. This stands for Significant business challenge, Mechanisms, Iterations, Leverage, Evaluate, and Share. He believes big data projects should start with a specific business problem. They should not merely focus on amassing data for its own sake.
• The “12 V-Words” of Big Data: While the industry typically uses 3 or 5 Vs (Volume, Velocity, Variety, etc.), Jones satirically expands this to 12, including Vagueness, Vanity, Virility, and Voracity. He uses these to highlight the lack of clarity and the “thuggish” nature of unrefined data.
• Technology vs. Process: He maintains that Big Data is a technology. It is used for ingesting and searching unstructured data. It is not a business solution or a “silver bullet.”

Analysis of His Stance

• Close to Reality: Many industry veterans find his views “close” to the truth. They address the high failure rate of big data projects. Additionally, they highlight the tendency for organizations to “boil the ocean” without clear objectives.
• Contrarian/Corrective: His views are often seen as a necessary corrective to the “snake-oil” sales tactics he describes. He emphasizes that “cheap hardware does not equal cheap outcomes” and that risk should be shared between vendors and clients.
• Critique: Those who find his views “not true” criticize him. Some view his approach as too cynical. They argue that he overlooks the genuine successes in various fields. These fields include predictive analytics, machine learning, and large-scale data processing. They have achieved transformative successes despite the marketing fluff.

In summary, Jones positions himself as a “pragmatic” voice. He doesn’t necessarily say the technology is useless. Rather, he argues that the narrative surrounding it is often deceptive. It also lacks professional ethics.

Big Data, analytics and 4th generation data warehousing by Martyn Jones. This video features Martyn Jones. He discusses his views on integrating big data into architectural frameworks. He moves beyond the hype towards a more coherent and usable business strategy.