Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#331

Post by bloodyplonker22 » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:21 AM UTC

alexjplant wrote: post #218

jvanderbot wrote: post #164

It's surprising to me that people don't consider these coded language. Sure, the junior manager might use them vaguely to mimic, but IMHO, when vague language comes up at decision tables, it's usually coding something more precise in a sort of plausible deniability. A senior manager on reviewing a proposal asks them to synergize with existing efforts: Your work is redundant you're wasting your time. A senior director…

Synergy has a real meaning: 1+1=3. A cigar and a whiskey. Chocolate and peanut butter. Hall and Oates. Et cetera. Unfortunately it's one of those terms like "DevOps" or "jam band" or "martini" whose true meaning has been sullied by people trying to sound cooler than they are. On the rare occasions I've used it sincerely in meetings I've always caveated it with some variation of "the real meaning, not the BS one." Thi…

I once told a female coworker she used my style of syntactic sugar. Later that week, I received a stern email from HR.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

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Post by rkomorn » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:27 AM UTC

alexjplant wrote: post #264

collingreen wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always avoid synergy and say "bigger than the sum of its parts" or "peanut butter and jelly". Simple language with less baggage.

...except for those of us who think that PB&J is a culinary abomination in which case the metaphor disintegrates ;-D (apologies to my mother for having to make me PB-only sandwiches growing up) I do wonder whether adding chips or bacon to counteract the cloying one-dimensional sweetness of the other ingredients would make me a fan though... chunky natural PB, blackberry jelly, hickory-smoked bacon on ciabatta? Hipste…

I don't often want to start fights on HN but how dare you...

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

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Post by sigwinch » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 11:00 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #272

red-iron-pine wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gervais Principle by the Ribbonfarm guy gets into this: powertalk vs. babytalk https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... the Cornell article is basically just empirical testing of these concepts.

Also summarised in https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of...

> mortified to show off a $10,000 watch, but excitedly tell you about their $100,000 kitchen remodel filled with 100-mile diet cookbooks and single-origin Japanese knives, or their 6-month work sabbatical they spent powerlifting. This is a group of people where a Subaru is a higher-status car than a Cadillac, but the highest status car is none.

Very Boulder, CO

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#334

Post by sigwinch » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 11:21 AM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #257

jjk166 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the test these weren't coded language, they were randomly generated phrases. The finding is that the people who don't know how to decipher the code are easily impressed by it and have poor analytical skills.

The Gervais Principle by the Ribbonfarm guy gets into this: powertalk vs. babytalk https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... the Cornell article is basically just empirical testing of these concepts.

If you like ribbonfarm, the comment section in his follow up is worth reading:

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/12/13/random-promotions-and-...

I wouldn’t be surprised if research like Cornell’s was inspired there.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

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Post by dboon » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 11:23 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #272

red-iron-pine wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gervais Principle by the Ribbonfarm guy gets into this: powertalk vs. babytalk https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... the Cornell article is basically just empirical testing of these concepts.

Also summarised in https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of...

Ah god damn it, I'm Michael Scott...

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#336

Post by enbugger » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 11:35 AM UTC

hibikir wrote: post #67

NoSalt wrote: post #55

"synergistic leadership" or "growth-hacking paradigms" are, in my opinion, what my teenage son refers to as "brain rot". I don't know where these people come from who make up these terms, or what childhood trauma has done this to them, but I absolutely cannot tolerate any of it, it makes my skin crawl.

It's a bit better: They are forms of obfuscation and lowering information in a channel. They are designed for environments where being clear is very risky. In certain organizations, you are better off being unclear than asking for approval or consensus on a tricky decision: You produce an incomprehensible, vague mess of a message, and avoid argument, as argument in those places leads to paralysis. Now, does this mean…

> They are designed for environments where being clear is very risky

So fake guru courses mostly

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#337

Post by trakkstar » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

The actual article is quite good but the HN title is quite miserable in summarizing what the article is actually about.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

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Post by hananova » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

anthonypasq wrote: post #160

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate speak as a signalling mechanism is only effective among the "clueless" in the Gervais model. If any CEO tried to talk 1:1 to a competent board member that way, they would lose all credibility. Once you've operated at a certain level you get it This also holds true for competent non-board members. I have interacted with C-level executives at fortune 100 companies, as well as smaller businesses. It is almost…

what you view as subtly manipulative is just having good social skills

It’s both.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#339

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

Scarblac wrote: post #69

Aeolun wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When applied without thinking about why. Yes. Except dependency injection. I really can’t imagine why you’d ever not use that. I suppose it’s possible to overuse, but you’d still have better code than without. Certainly more testable code.

Because code becomes harder to understand. With direct dependencies, if you are trying to understand some code that calls some function and what it does exactly isn't completely obvious, you can press a button to go to it, understand it, and come back. With dependency injection it depends on what is going to be inserted during runtime, so you can't.

With dependency injection your interface always describes what your implementation can do. If you see the interface and you have to care what is going to happen when you use it you are doing it wrong.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

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Post by warty » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

hunterpayne wrote: post #304

sp1nningaway wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are just examples of academic/progressive jargon that I hear often in the Bay Area and in progressive circles. "Decolonizing," could mean for instance changing world history curriculum to cover non-western civilizations. "Centering" seems like maybe it just means focusing on, but there is a whole academic apparatus for designing curriculum around say, indigenous practices, and centering is the word used for tha…

What you write is true but it is also a bit dishonest. You are culling the questionable ideas being signaled out of your explanation. Really no different from MAGA folks who claim Trump is playing 4D chess or people who defended Hans Reiser because he wrote a really great filesystem. People don't tend to believe things that they don't want to be true (even if they are). Specifically, the fact that people who use this…

There's a chance this comment is what the user would have described as an incoherent but outright attack.

The user was claiming they didn't really understand the terminology but seemed to be trying their best when asked of another user to elucidate. You led with calling them dishonest.

You then said they were functionally MAGA and brought up some presumably racist German dude that I suspect few of us know about. You then had a diatribe on some view that had never been brought up in this thread and are now somehow discussing local governmental policies and propaganda.

I have no clue what I just read or how it connects to the post they made. I've tried to read in best effort but as best I can tell you maybe responded to the wrong person.