Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults • Hacker News Board

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#101

Post by crispyambulance » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #71

crispyambulance wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... sometimes use business talk as a tool to ... I think it's natural to want to speak in a language or style which one might think others approve. However, I have found that while many managers are apt to use biz-speak/buzzwords themselves, it's not necessarily what they want to hear from others. If you can instead speak in clear, concise, and empathetic sentences that get to the point, most people really apprecia…

You're right, but these are two different scenarios: 1) you really want to communicate something to someone so that they understand it well, 2) your PHB has already decided what is best for you and you choose your defence strategy; in that case using buzzwords might be helpful.

Everyone knows, privately in their inner thoughts, that "biz-speak" is baloney.

They use that language as a front for insecurity, not knowing what to say, or not being willing to say what they really mean. If the PHB is obfuscating an unpalatable (and non-negotiable) demand in biz-speak, it's not like parroting back some biz-speak is going to change his mind or strong-arm him.

You chances are better if you address the actual issues in plain and sensible language (or perhaps don't say anything at all). Even if it doesn't work, it at least lays bare the insincerity of the PHB's biz-speak.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#102

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

frankc wrote: post #87

tomatocracy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ex date is the first day when the security trades without rights to the dividend (or rights, or coupon etc). It's not the day when holders are entitled to the dividend because if you trade on a particular day, you don't own the securities until settlement occurs which is on a later day (different markets have different conventions here for how much later). The company/issuer will have a record date for administra…

I think we are in agreement?

As I read your comments:

>> [The ex-date] is the day after holders of the security are entitled to the dividend.

> It's not the day when holders are entitled to the dividend because if you trade on a particular day, you don't own the securities until settlement occurs

Imagine that the ex-date for a security is 2017-05-19. You sell one such security on 2017-05-18. Settlement clears on 2017-05-22. Because of the delay in settlement, you held the security on the ex-date (and on the day before the ex-date), but you're not entitled to the dividend because you sold the security before the ex-date.

That's my reading of the two comments. I take no position on this. The point I'm making is different, that in the phrase "ex-dividend date", the "ex" and the "dividend" are not related to each other. They both relate to "date"; "ex-dividend" is not a logical unit within the phrase. However, the phrase "ex-dividend date" (good Latin usage) was clipped to "ex-dividend", and then people started assuming "ex" meant "without", because an "ex-dividend security" (no longer good Latin usage) was one that traded without rights to the dividend.

Stated another way --

A "dividend date" is a kind of date, a date related to the concept "dividend". "Ex-dividend date" is (originally) a prepositional phrase meaning "after the dividend date". It's not a kind of date related to the concept "ex-dividend"; "ex-dividend" is not a concept.

But then, English-speaking traders who didn't know Latin reanalyzed the phrase "ex-dividend date" as a noun phrase referring to a kind of date, which required a further reanalysis of what exactly "ex" meant. That new meaning, "without", is original to English.

In tree form, we have an original phrase (ex-(dividend date)) being reanalyzed as ((ex-dividend) date).

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#103

Post by hibbelig » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

jon-wood wrote: post #14

I’m curious when people swapped the word reply with revert. I keep seeing people use phrases like “I’ll revert” when what they mean is “I’ll look into that and get back to you”. Particularly working in software I always have to stop myself when the initial reaction is that they’ve just said they’ll undo what I’ve requested.

Yes. When you send an email about a commit, and you get a reply that they will “revert back” some time later, you can be very confused.

Especially if you use git or svn, given that “git revert” and “svn revert” exist.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#104

Post by tomatocracy » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #102

frankc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we are in agreement?

As I read your comments: >> [The ex-date] is the day after holders of the security are entitled to the dividend. > It's not the day when holders are entitled to the dividend because if you trade on a particular day, you don't own the securities until settlement occurs Imagine that the ex-date for a security is 2017-05-19. You sell one such security on 2017-05-18. Settlement clears on 2017-05-22. Because of the delay…

> Imagine that the ex-date for a security is 2017-05-19. You sell one such security on 2017-05-18. Settlement clears on 2017-05-22. Because of the delay in settlement, you held the security on the ex-date (and on the day before the ex-date), but you're not entitled to the dividend because you sold the security before the ex-date.

That's right. The ex date is relevant to the day you trade (which in practice means entering into a contract to buy and sell securities at a certain price, not actually delivering those securities/money), whereas the record date is the equivalent for the day of ownership. The ex date will be X-1 business days before the record date with X and the definition of business day depending on the market settlement convention. In some markets X=1 hence the confusion between the two, I think.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#105

Post by WorldPeas » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #55

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how in Kerbal Space Program, you don't crash, you "lithobrake". Like airbraking only on something with a bit more resistance.

I had a science teacher who would kill mice before feeding them to his snake. His method was "rapid deceleration" (he threw them at the ground).

Our science teacher in the 7th grade made a model coliseum out of foam-core and would release crickets into it for her lizards to eat during homeroom

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#106

Post by sethammons » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

WorldPeas wrote: post #105

sethammons wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a science teacher who would kill mice before feeding them to his snake. His method was "rapid deceleration" (he threw them at the ground).

Our science teacher in the 7th grade made a model coliseum out of foam-core and would release crickets into it for her lizards to eat during homeroom

That's fantastic haha.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#107

Post by blaser-waffle » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

CheesecakeFred wrote: post #69

yesbabyyes wrote: post #21

It may not be quite the same thing, but this reminds me of Venkatesh Rao's "Posture talk" from his Gervais Principle series: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-...

I was going to comment on this article, but realized it is futile to go into detail and critizise it at this place. Simply put I would stay far away from articles and people thinking the way Venkatesh Rao exhibits here. Highly toxic and inhumane management bullshit.

I've come to the same conclusion after reading the article a few times. It pops up on HN a lot.

It's a hilarious and dark read, and certainly has grains of truth, but framing your worldview around that is silly and dangerous.

Rao is a good writer, but he's filtering a parody comic through a parody show, with additions from Dilbert (another parody), and supplements the arguments with examples from management gurus of questionable relevance. It's like Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra, where it's a simulation (parody) filtered through another simulation filtered through another simulation until you have something that doesn't reflect reality.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#108

Post by blaser-waffle » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

undebuggable wrote: post #20

As we are at the word play, TIL "turgid", "shibboleth", "cloying", "hackneyed", "wheelhouse", "iconoclast". To native English speakers I advice to try at least once in their career an employer with English as a business language but not headquartered in any Anglosphere country, where English is a second language to the most employees - the communication dynamics in such environments is quite different and the America…

+1 to this. We have a lot of offshore support teams, and I've lost close to 20 minutes explaining "nitty-gritty"

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#109

Post by amylene » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

lonelappde wrote: post #81

MatekCopatek wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, what I would want to say in such a situation is simply "this meeting is useless, let me get back to work", but I would be percieved as a grumpy developer with an attitude. I wouldn't call all the sugarcoating effective communication as I expect everyone in the company to understand that not wasting people's time will let them do more work and benefit the customer in the end.

The personal hosting the meeting thinks it's not useless, so flatly disagreeing without a rationale is useless.

The onus is on the organizer to explain why the meeting will be useful. If they don’t do that upfront, a good culture encourages and supports ICs who ask the organizer for an agenda.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#110

Post by therockspush » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

SimonSword wrote: post #12

This reminded me of the section about "Clutter" in the book "On writing well": > Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes. When the Digital Equipment Corporation eliminated 3,000 jobs its statement didn’t mention layoffs; those were “involuntary methodologies.” When an Air Force missile crashed, it “impacted with the ground prematurely.”

More Air Force jargon, every now and then something on the plane had to be malletized.