> and make a PPT telling a room full of engineers and developers how they should be building complex systems.

This is unfortunately not an experience I am unfamiliar with. I have to pretend to eat a big plate of humble pie on the first technical call with a lot of our clients.

Once you learn their first reaction is going to be to reject your proposal on arbitrary grounds (i.e. a new security theater show), you start to present simpler proposals purely for the sake of tripping their initial response. Once you get them to fire their objections across the way, it is really easy to review the impact and build the real proposal that meticulously deals with each point that was raised.