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

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

#161

Post by SoftTalker »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #122
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a sieve to keep the hordes of fools at bay 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 >a system for turning bullshit into parse errors. This is the (cynical version of) the framing I tend to hold about corpor…

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…

> I have also met some that seemingly calculate their tone and cadence to try to manipulate the person(s)/people(s) they're talking to.

This is a trait of a psychopath. Not surprisingly, one finds a lot of them in the executive ranks.

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

#163

Post by pklausler »

moepstar wrote: post #138
aerodexis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gervais model is predicated on sociopathy as the driving force of social cohesion. This is the kind of model a sociopath would construct. There are other models available to us. Social organizations require some sort of glue to bind them together. They need ways to maintain cohesion despite vagueness and to obscure (small) errors. There is a cap put upon max individual output, but aggregate output is much higher…

Hate to ask, but since it came up again and a quick search couldn’t find it - what’s that Gervais model? Links / explanations welcome! Edit: seems that searching for „Gervais principle“ turned up what was talked about…

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... is a good explanation. The diagram of the "MacLeod Cycle" utterly convinced me, having been around that loop a few times.

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

#164

Post by jvanderbot »

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 talks about better alignment of their various depts: We need to cut fat and merge, start identifying your bad players

etc etc.

If my impressions are correct, of course ICs are going to balk at these statements - they seem disconnected from reality and are magically disconnected from the effects on purpose. Yes, this is bad management to the ICs, but it's pretty culturally inevitable, I think, to have an in-group signalling their strategies using coded language.

A good manager takes this direction in front of all their ICs, laughs it off as corpo speak, but was given the signal to have a private talk with one of their group who triggered the problem... I dunno maybe my time in management was particularly distopian, but this seemed obvious once I saw it.

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

#165

Post by bitwize »

Corporate speak, as satirized in the Weird Al hit "Mission Statement", actually serves an important social function. It signals "I'm one of you, the business class, I will align my goals with those of the organization."

It's like that phenomenon of, you have these British people, Hyacinth Bucket types. They want to be seen as upper class when they're not. So they speak in an overly polite register that they think makes them sound upper class. Actual aristocrats, by contrast, speak rather plainly amongst each other. They know where they are in society, and they know that everyone else who matters also knows.

Similarly, the people who speak of operationalizing new strategies and leveraging core competencies are trying to sound impressive to those below, and like good little do bees to those above. The people who lead an organization to success speak in terms of the actual problems they encounter and the real things that need to be done to solve them.

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

#166

Post by SoftTalker »

alcasa wrote: post #21
rdevilla wrote: post #16

I suspect this is why formal languages exist; as a sieve to keep the hordes of fools at bay, and a system for turning bullshit into parse errors. We are undoing much of this progress by now insisting everything be expressed in natural language for a machine to translate on our behalf, like a tour guide. The natives will continue to speak amongst themselves in their mother tongue.

Maybe controversial, but I believe a lot of OOP/Clean Code patterns are the software equivalent of corporate BS.

Most of OOP and design patterns was yet another attempt to make it possible for lower-ability (i.e. cheaper) developers to be productive. Just like dimensional lumber and standards like "wall studs are spaced 16 inches on center" made it possible for a lower-ability carpenter to frame a house and have everything fit together properly. Though in the latter case, it actually was successful.

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

#167

Post by array_key_first »

glitchc wrote: post #47
alcasa wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe controversial, but I believe a lot of OOP/Clean Code patterns are the software equivalent of corporate BS.

Why is OOP lumped with Clean Code? Objects are useful for managing complex states and relationships. They are complementary, not mutually exclusive, to procedural and functional programming.

Usually when people refer to OOP they don't mean encapsulation, although that's the core tenant of OOP. Encapsulation, private and public etc is a given. Usually they're talking about the other OOP stuff, like inheritance. Inheritance is pretty much bad and is the wrong abstraction for 90% of stuff.

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

#168

Post by PunchyHamster »

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…

Do note that senior manager thinking the work is redundant also might be completely not aligned with reality. so "I think your work is redundant" is much closer to usual reality. And it's easy to be seen that as you pretty much also need to be a PR person for your own department, not just a manager, especially if department is doing necessary but not glorious tasks

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

#169

Post by Muromec »

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…

Its an interesting take, bit why is this coded ingroup messaging is communicated to outgroup then?

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

#170

Post by PunchyHamster »

rdevilla wrote: post #16

I suspect this is why formal languages exist; as a sieve to keep the hordes of fools at bay, and a system for turning bullshit into parse errors. We are undoing much of this progress by now insisting everything be expressed in natural language for a machine to translate on our behalf, like a tour guide. The natives will continue to speak amongst themselves in their mother tongue.

The corpo-speak sounds like mostly way to communicate contentious things in nice way, everything done to not sound negative or aggresive, while knowing (or hoping) that other side gets the message.

It is awfully unproductive way to do it but I'm sure HR approves.

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