Secret language • Hacker News Board

Re: Secret language

#21

Post by ghshephard » Thu, Dec 31, 2009, 4:58 AM UTC

endtime wrote: post #8

Joel's not really contributing anything here, and as I've said elsewhere, this is marketing-speak, not Microsoft-speak. At least, I never heard anyone talk like this when I was there over the summer. I learned some new words ("dogfooding") and people do call Ballmer "SteveB" (just as they often refer to coworkers by their email aliases), but I can assure you this posting is as incomprehensible to most Microsoft engin…

DogFooding is such a universally well known phrase in the technical industry, that I was utterly shocked when I ran into someone for whom it was new. It may be an insular phrase, but it's at least insular to a _very_ broad community.

Re: Secret language

#22

Post by gaius » Thu, Dec 31, 2009, 11:12 AM UTC

IBM say DASD when they mean "hard disk"...

Re: Secret language

#23

Post by endtime » Thu, Dec 31, 2009, 7:11 PM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #21

endtime wrote: post #8

Joel's not really contributing anything here, and as I've said elsewhere, this is marketing-speak, not Microsoft-speak. At least, I never heard anyone talk like this when I was there over the summer. I learned some new words ("dogfooding") and people do call Ballmer "SteveB" (just as they often refer to coworkers by their email aliases), but I can assure you this posting is as incomprehensible to most Microsoft engin…

DogFooding is such a universally well known phrase in the technical industry, that I was utterly shocked when I ran into someone for whom it was new. It may be an insular phrase, but it's at least insular to a _very_ broad community.

Fair enough. I've been a student my whole life, and had never worked for a software company before, which is why it was new to me. If you met someone 10 years into his career, then sure, that could be surprising - but everyone has to hear the term for the first time at some point.

Re: Secret language

#24

Post by Alex63 » Thu, Dec 31, 2009, 8:17 PM UTC

ejames wrote: post #17

microcentury wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they mean 'virtual team', maybe? i.e. a team spread across a bunch of reporting lines, functions or offices that works on this one specific project, forming a 'virtual' team.

Yes, exactly. "v-team" is Microsoft-speak for a virtual team, most often a subset of people in a larger team who do not all report to the same lower-level manager. If you have a team of 12 people, then select 4 of them to deal with issues in the product's installation and set-up, you might call them "the setup v-team". Not to be confused with "v dash", which refers to a contract employee from a vendor. In the Microso…

Spot on. V-team also often connotes geographic dispersal, as well as reporting to different orgs.

Re: Secret language

#25

Post by occam » Mon, Jan 04, 2010, 6:58 AM UTC

TeHCrAzY wrote: post #14

occam wrote: post #9

OK, but to be fair to MS, this appears to have been written by a nonnative English speaker. Indian, I think. So there's another factor at work.

What points that out to you?

"Top of mind" doesn't quite sound native to me. The use of the ampersand like that seems Indian too. Finally the exclamation point is slight evidence.