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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

#291

Post by geodel »

bananaflag wrote: post #204
btilly wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yup, saw that review. My takeaway is if one has knowledge and training level of Scott Alexander then this book has nothing new to offer. But since most folks don't so this maybe a interesting read.

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

#292

Post by andrewflnr »

VorpalWay wrote: post #281
andrewflnr wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually think and act that way, so much the better. I don't even particularly disbelieve you. But can you really look at the mass of humanity around you and believe they think the same way? Even if they claim to value critical thinking, watch what they do, what they buy, how they vote. You've most likely trained yourself to value critical thinking in your leaders, most likely from an early enough age that you…

Hm, having a journalist and an academic (with a heavy focus on applied rigorous statistics) as parents probably helped there, you are right. But school is supposed to teach this, at least here in Sweden it is a part of the curriculum. But indeed, that doesn't seem to help, and the US it is especially bad (not saying the situation is good here either though). There are other things I do remember having to train myself…

I'm not convinced it's actually possible to teach critical thinking to someone who doesn't care, but I'm glad your schools are trying harder.

But even when people are trained in critical thinking, the part at the end of my comment about applying it in full generality is also critical. You have to be emotionally ready to apply it in cases where it produces unpleasant conclusions, not just for your job or when it helps dunk on your political opponents. Also difficult to impossible to teach at scale.

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

#293

Post by stinkbeetle »

jvanderbot wrote: post #235
contubernio wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a hell of a lot more functional to simply say directly what you want and mean. This sort of management is dysfunctional even in it's premises.

In this example you're actually just being polite. You are not calling out a person publicly, you're transmitting a course-correction through their manager that allows the person who knows you best to communicate the correction the best way AND it allows the corpo to take the blame for being vague and uninformative. Sure, direct, cold, concrete, public data is "best" in the objective sense, but people's feelings and…

Schedule a meeting with the people you are directing it to then.

Blathering vague garbage execu-speak in a large meeting, even if it is some hare brained attempt to send "coded messages", is usually just some self-important charlatan bloviating and trying to sound intelligent and important to everybody else. And it is never effective communication.

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

#294

Post by notahacker »

jjk166 wrote: post #201
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…

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.

yeah, this is frankly isn't really showing what people think it's showing. The "not bullshit" examples are all manager-speak and coded phrases like

"We plan to right-size our manufacturing operations to align to the new strategy and take advantage of integration opportunities."

What the study actually shows is that less skilled people find it harder to distinguish this sort of way of saying jobs are being lost or puffery about "we have permission from the market to be a world class, tier one partner" from generated manager speak that's incoherent or mixes the metaphors up like "covering all bases of the low hanging fruit" or "drilling down one more click on people"). Probably because those less skilled people have poorer reading comprehension in general and typically less exposure to corporate environments.

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

#295

Post by mikkupikku »

Animats wrote: post #236

Corporate jargon is a relatively recent development in business history.[1] It wasn't seen much until the 1950s and 1960s, when "organization development" and management consulting became an industry. Peter Drucker seems to have popularized it in the 1980s. Then came PowerPoint. Before that it was more of a political and religious style of communication. In those areas, speeches and texts designed to be popular but n…

You all will hate me for pointing this out, but it strongly correlates with women entering the executive ranks of corporate America in the 80s. Complain about new age corporate jargon and see who joins in and agrees with you; more men than women. Complaining about it is masculine coded, just like pretending to not know the difference between red and maroon. And who are the most enthusiastic workplace champions of the latest corporate culture initiative? Almost always women. These are gross generalities with many exceptions, but I stand by it.

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

#296

Post by Waterluvian »

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…

Unnecessary abstractions are bad. These feel like those. Which leads you to wondering why they exist. And oftentimes it’s just like why bad developers preserve those unnecessary abstractions: job preservation.

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

#297

Post by faidit »

alexjplant wrote: post #218
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…

Synergy has a real meaning: 1+1=3. A cigar and a whiskey. Chocolate and peanut butter. Hall and Oates. Et cetera. Unfortunately it's one of those terms like "DevOps" or "jam band" or "martini" whose true meaning has been sullied by people trying to sound cooler than they are. On the rare occasions I've used it sincerely in meetings I've always caveated it with some variation of "the real meaning, not the BS one." Thi…

Synergy often means layoffs. As in, we merged two companies and now have two of every department, one of each has to go, and the remainder can do the work of both (yay synergy).

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

#298

Post by hunterpayne »

Waterluvian wrote: post #296
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…

Unnecessary abstractions are bad. These feel like those. Which leads you to wondering why they exist. And oftentimes it’s just like why bad developers preserve those unnecessary abstractions: job preservation.

They are in-group signifiers. And when someone uses them and doesn't understand the lingo, they are clearly an interloper. Its amazing to me that people do this for benefit but anywhere they do, you are certainly in a business or institution that is dying (perhaps slowly but still dying).

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

#299

Post by [deleted] »

atroon wrote: post #230
fhd2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the right move. If a word changes its colloquial meaning, better drop it and find a new one. Happens all the time. From stuff like "agile" in a software development context (pretty meaningless at this point, can mean anything from the original definition to the systematic micro management it got to be commonly associated with), to previously neutral words that became offensive (because they were commonly used…

> No individual holds power over connotations. Language just evolves. Okay, but I still reserve the right to be pissed off at teenagers using 'out of pocket' when they mean 'off the wall' or 'out of bounds'.

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