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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

#201

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…

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.

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

#202

If anyone wants a chuckle, I vibe-coded an endless supply of "synergizing paradigm" terms as a slideshow for a fake corporation. It's fun to put on in the background on a tv somewhere to see if anyone notices. https://brightpath-global-solutions.com/ Edit: repo link: https://github.com/chronick/global-business-solutions

Reminds me of corporate ipsum

https://www.corporate-ipsum.com/

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

#203

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?

[deleted]

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

#204
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For a somewhat cynical explanation of why that happens, I recommend https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... . As with all forms of cynicism, it has a grain of truth. And a much larger grain of truth than is comfortable.

Also see Scott Alexander's review

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-gervais-pri...

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

#205
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

When I was hired at my current role, it was clear to me that I'm in an IC vs Management position. It's really not that weird and is a very common term.

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

#206
post #86
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.

Unless you mean just regular constructor parameters, dependency injection in the sense of a runtime dependency injection framework is the one thing I try to avoid like the plague.

That is called a "DI Container", and usually manages the objects and order of instantiation etc.

Dependency injection simply means to take objects as parameters, and not instantiate them themselves (which causes "Inversion of Control" also commonly mentioned when talking about DI). DI Containers just makes the managing of objects easier.

Avoiding it like a plague seems excessive, did you have a bad experience with them?

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

#207
I feel like this study is very naive about how corporate status and power works. Consider this part:

> 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

The rank and file don't elevate leaders, it's decided by higher-ups, and the higher you go the more they care about actual non-bullshit results. Where bullshit thrives is because higher level business strategy is actually hard and ambiguous, so there's a continuum of bullshit where you are expected to at least say credible things, but it's couched in bullshit terminology to broaden the range of success they can claim, and leave room and plausable deniability for failures. Strong leaders are keenly aware of this nuance, and therefore leaders are judged on reputation and outcomes over time, because any given thing they say may be wrong, but the track record is undeniable. This is why you never hear a bad word about leaders while they are there, they are just fired (or more likely "resign") one day seemingly out of the blue.

What this article misses is that to survive in a corporate environment everyone needs to put up and nod along to bullshit. Most of the time whether it's right or wrong and the level of bullshit doesn't really matter to most of the employees, they're just incentivized to play along and not express negativity. Within the rank and file, obviously some are more susceptible to bullshit than others, but I don't think this study necessarily gets at that, as a lot of people will act agreeable just to survive in corporate life, and their disposition will be largely independent of their true understanding and feelings about whatever bullshit they are presented with day to day.

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

#208
post #28
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.

I worked with a junior dev who suddenly got really excited about Clean Code. Every example he brought up left me feeling that there was a kernel of good advice, but the book wanted you to take it to such an extreme that it would result in shitty code.

It strongly pushes for max 3 LOC per function, and I am not even joking.

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

#209

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…

You're confusing bullshit with jargon, which is something they talk about in the paper. The word synergize has a bad reputation, but its mere presence in a sentence is merely a signal, it doesn't mean the sentence is bullshit.

"We will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing" is an example from the article - you can't actualize a level, you can't renew a level either. And "cradle-to-grave credentialing" is at best a bad way to describe some real concept. It's word-salad from start to finish. It's not coded language, it's bullshit.

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

#210

If anyone wants a chuckle, I vibe-coded an endless supply of "synergizing paradigm" terms as a slideshow for a fake corporation. It's fun to put on in the background on a tv somewhere to see if anyone notices. https://brightpath-global-solutions.com/ Edit: repo link: https://github.com/chronick/global-business-solutions

A bit of "hacker history"... at the dawn of the web 1993 was birthed the first app (that I know of) along these lines: "Buzzword Bingo".

It got mentioned in WSJ of all places as news of it spread.

For the history+app from its creator, see:

https://lurkertech.com/buzzword-bingo/

(Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword_bingo )

I'm glad to see, 25-30 years later, the hackers/cynical-tech-workers who birthed it getting justified by actual social science research.

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