Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults • Hacker News Board

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#51

Post by CPLX » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

dntbnmpls wrote: post #33

MatekCopatek wrote: post #16

I sometimes use business talk as a tool to make countering my points unattractive when having public discussions inside the company. For example - let's say your boss decides to introduce some mandatory meeting that everyone agrees is useless. Rather then complaining about it in normal language, I would say things like "well, one of our core values is delighting clients, which I would be able to do much more efficien…

Oh "values". This meaningless buzzword has creeped into every facet of modern life. From politicians and their "western values" to CEOs and their "values" to baseball teams and their "values", everyone uses "values" to justify their evil or to defend or excuse their evil. And of course there is the "alignment" of "values". Oh, stealing signs doesn't align with your team's values. We benefited from it greatly for year…

I disagree, I think “values” is a great word that has a clear meaning. It‘s a statement of what things you consider more important than others.

The problem you’re outlining here is that people often use the word while lying.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#52

Post by julian_t » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 11:32 AM UTC

docdeek wrote: post #4

A startup I worked for was constantly seeking to have everyone aligned on things. The original concept of having people pointed in the same direction was admirable, but it quickly became something like a capital-A ‘Aligned’ (meaning good) with the inverse capital-U ‘Unaligned’ being about the worst thing you could be. God help the person who found the word ‘Unaligned’ on their semester review...

Sounds like the difference between "agile development" and "Agile development" ;-)

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#53

Post by greendestiny_re » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 11:36 AM UTC

Blizzard developer interviews often involve phrases from the Dictionary of Management Jargon [1].

Consider this excerpt from an interview [2] with Steven Chang and David Kosak done on February 6, 2020 regarding the Galakrond's Awakening expansion for Hearthstone after the players complained about the game being unbalanced:

>In terms of the minor balance changes we’ve been doing recently, it’s something where we want to try and see where we can strike that balance where the community feels happy about it without introducing too much change so that the game feels completely different. This is a fine line to walk, and we will always be watching and listening to the community about the amount and timings of changes.

No actual detail is given on anything, it's all empty feelgood sentences. Entire paragraphs go on like this, stating opinions and desires as outlined in the DoMJ:

>Statements of desires – A statement that something is hoped for does not imply any action is to be taken to ensure the desired outcome. Example: I want us all to be happy with our compensation.

1. http://dictionaryofmanagementjargon.yolasite.com/

2. https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/interview-with-hearthsto...

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#54

Post by tomatocracy » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 11:42 AM UTC

growlist wrote: post #44

tomatocracy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word revert, with this meaning, is still in widespread use in business in Britain too, in my experience.

Doubtful. I've worked in the UK for more than 20 years, and the only time I've ever heard this usage is within outsourced IT providers in India.

Perhaps it's industry specific but in finance/investment I see it used all the time (and I use it myself - I'm a Brit).

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#55

Post by sethammons » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 11:43 AM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #45

SimonSword wrote: post #12

This reminded me of the section about "Clutter" in the book "On writing well": > Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes. When the Digital Equipment Corporation eliminated 3,000 jobs its statement didn’t mention layoffs; those were “involuntary methodologies.” When an Air Force missile crashed, it “impacted with the ground prematurely.”

I like how in Kerbal Space Program, you don't crash, you "lithobrake". Like airbraking only on something with a bit more resistance.

I had a science teacher who would kill mice before feeding them to his snake. His method was "rapid deceleration" (he threw them at the ground).

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#56

Post by tomatocracy » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 11:53 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #26

czzr wrote: post #17

All areas of practice have their own jargon, words that superficially sound similar to regular English but actually have specific insider meaning that promotes faster in-group communication (and a degree of in-group signalling) - this is true for scientists, software engineers, yoga instructors and yes, business people.

> All areas of practice have their own jargon, words that superficially sound similar to regular English but actually have specific insider meaning Related: coverage of the recent cum-ex scandals has often included the factoid that "cum-ex" is from the Latin for "with-without". Of course this isn't true. While cum is Latin for "with", the Latin for "without" is sine -- ex is Latin for "from". Instead, as used in the…

Ex as a prefix does ultimately derive from Latin here but meaning "outside" (hence eg excommunicated or exclave), not "without". This makes sense linguistically because the entitlement to the dividend is outside the scope of what's being bought and sold in the trade.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#57

Post by pas » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 12:06 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #35

antiterra wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Root cause’ is neither redundant nor simply a ‘corporate buzzword.’ It represents a clear concept of a causal chain with an underlying factor that gates all other contributing causes. The term has been around for a century and ‘root cause analysis’ is a formal construct in a number of professional contexts, including analysis of aviation incidents.

Except when people use it as a verb as in "we need to root cause this".

That sounds forced, but might still be better than "we need to do an RCA", because if someone doesn't know what RCA means in that context, then they have to ask.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#58

Post by Razengan » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 12:10 PM UTC

MatekCopatek wrote: post #16

I sometimes use business talk as a tool to make countering my points unattractive when having public discussions inside the company. For example - let's say your boss decides to introduce some mandatory meeting that everyone agrees is useless. Rather then complaining about it in normal language, I would say things like "well, one of our core values is delighting clients, which I would be able to do much more efficien…

Oh that is actually quite masterful trolling. I shall adopt it.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#59

Post by pas » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 12:12 PM UTC

friendlybus wrote: post #38

MatekCopatek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of some words you feel are being unfairly criticized? I.e. words that actually carry more meaning then their "plain" alternatives.

You don't need 'more' meaning. These words are windows into a world of thinking about problems in a different light. I spoke to a developer who brought up the idea of disrupting Steam. I don't think that's going to happen this decade, the discussion around the idea was a good place to integrate some thoughts about gaming networks and game sales platforms. That is a productive outcome. The author of this article is ne…

The op-ed (or the author) is right, that when this kind of language is used for big corporate broadcasts it always comes off as slimy, fake, long, inefficient fluff filled around sinister double-speak.

And it also got right that when workers hide behind this language others (and the work too) usually suffer.

Of course there never is "all general business speak". Every big company has a local lingo full of bullshit, acronyms, abbreviations, phrases and so on. HR, legal, CSR, marketing and sales - so basically pieces of broadcast style communication has a lot of similarity in them, but .. that's it.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#60

Post by pas » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 12:18 PM UTC

skytreader wrote: post #31

czzr wrote: post #17

All areas of practice have their own jargon, words that superficially sound similar to regular English but actually have specific insider meaning that promotes faster in-group communication (and a degree of in-group signalling) - this is true for scientists, software engineers, yoga instructors and yes, business people.

> that promotes faster in-group communication I think the reason that business jargon gets more flak than usual jargon is because it does not really facilitate faster communication. At least not to everyone involved. Maybe salesman to salesman, business dev to business dev, it would make sense. But then they use that jargon with everyone else (i.e., when it is not appropriate to) and it sounds just as ridiculous as w…

> As per my last email

Isn't this just the "As I've written in my last letter" for the e-mail era? Maybe it's just a cultural difference. (In my native language - and probably because of that in English too - I try use the verbs corresponding to the medium, so if I wrote to someone then I'll refer to that communication as "as you probably read" instead of "heard", and so on.)