I recently came across a pretty entertaining blog post by Ted Dziuba about NLP in which he recounts some bad experiences and concludes that NLP isn't for everyone: "If you are considering NLP as the answer to a real problem, it's virtually certain that you're overthinking it." I think in many cases he's right, and it reminds me of Alexander Pop's famous couplet from An Essay on Criticism: "A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."
But my favorite part comes at the end of his blog post, where he begrudgingly acknowledges that NLP does have some merits, at least for those who know what they're doing:
"That being said, NLP does have its place: making the best fucking Wikipedia search engine there ever was with technology licensed from Xerox and then selling yourself to Microsoft."
I think that's a compliment. Thanks, Ted.