Latin was widely used in the Catholic religion as a way to disenfranchise the masses thus elevating the priesthood and the church to an undue empowered status.  Luckily those days are behind us.  Unfortunately that hasn’t stopped humans from seeking to retain special status over their fellow man.  A lot of professions seek to unduly obfuscate the technical aspects of their work to protect their status and compensation.  The engineering and technology profession is certainly not immune.  Now, there is certainly a valid argument that public safety is of paramount importance and thus the need for treating certain professions in a tightly controlled guild-like fashion with appropriate licensure and regulations is warranted.  That doesn’t entitle us to make the technical aspects of our professions unduly complicated thus preventing the layperson from understanding what, how, and why we do certain things.  In fact, we should be striving to empower understanding by the masses.  That’s how to provide value in the 21st century.  By explaining and empowering people with our knowledge, not hiding it or obfuscating it.  That, as unintuitive sounds, is what gives you value.

So stop making things more complicated than they need to be.  Don’t be afraid of sharing your “secrets” of how you do what you do.  Blog, YouTube, tweet, post, share!  By explaining what you do and how you do it, you will find greater success in sharing than hiding your knowledge.  In the 21st century you don’t get successful by being that guy people HAVE to go to solve a problem, you become successful by sharing your knowledge to people can solve simple problems on their own and then they CHOOSE to come to you for the harder problems.