No love for Erving Goffman here at all?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Ev...
Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
181–190 of 354 posts
Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#182It'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…
For anyone else as confused as I was; apparently "IC" means Individual Contributor, as opposed to leadership or management.
Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#183> To test this, he created a “corporate bullshit generator” that churns out meaningless but impressive-sounding sentences like, "We will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing” and “By getting our friends in the tent with our best practices, we will pressure-test a renewed level of adaptive coherence.”
So you’re saying people who thought randomly-generated, meaningless sentences sound smart aren’t themselves smart? Who would’ve thought.
Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#184In related news, water is wet and cats usually don't seem to feel confortable when sprayed with it.
Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#185It'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…
For anyone else as confused as I was; apparently "IC" means Individual Contributor, as opposed to leadership or management.
Let's play "spot the manager"
Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#186It'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…
More precisely than "plausible deniability", it is plausible EMOTIONAL deniability.
When you put enough bafflegab around it, you can almost ignore that you said something unpleasant. Because the part of our brains that processes for emotional content, doesn't process complex language very well. Hence the example with ten paragraphs of complexity to hide the pain of a major lay-off.
After I noticed this, I found that I did this. I reliably use complex language when I don't like what I'm saying. So much so that I could use readability checkers to find discomfort that I was not aware that I had!
And I'm not the only one to notice this. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpVtJNv4ZNM for George Carlin's famous skit on how the honesty of the phrase "shell shock" over time got softened over time to "post-traumatic stress disorder". A phrase that can be understood, but no longer felt.
Corporations have just developed their own special complex language for this. And you're right. It is emotionally dishonest. That's why they do it.
Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#187It'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…
> it's pretty culturally inevitable, I think, to have an in-group signalling their strategies using coded language.
Pretty shocking belief when you're of courseing all "ICs".
If it was inevitable than the amount and degree of corporate BS would've been stable over the last 5 decades, and across countries and languages.
In reality, it has been anything but, instead showing massive differences across both.
Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#188It'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…
There's CYA jargon, like layoffs, workforce rationalizations, letting someone go, challenging fiscal environment.
And there's blatant bullshit, like paradigm shift, culture building, and so on.
Two categories of execspeak.
Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#189“Employees who are more likely to fall for corporate bullshit may help elevate the types of dysfunctional leaders who are more likely to use it, creating a sort of negative feedback loop. Technically that's a positive feedback loop, or reinforcing feedback loop. The author is probably using "negative" in to mean undesirable. Gotta get your jargon right!
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Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
#190I 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.
You seem nice