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Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

theatlantic.com

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Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#71

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

crispyambulance wrote: post #48
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…

> ... sometimes use business talk as a tool to ... I think it's natural to want to speak in a language or style which one might think others approve. However, I have found that while many managers are apt to use biz-speak/buzzwords themselves, it's not necessarily what they want to hear from others. If you can instead speak in clear, concise, and empathetic sentences that get to the point, most people really apprecia…

You're right, but these are two different scenarios: 1) you really want to communicate something to someone so that they understand it well, 2) your PHB has already decided what is best for you and you choose your defence strategy; in that case using buzzwords might be helpful.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#72

Post by smoyer »

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…

You have to be careful with that ... I would sometimes do the same thing to managers who don't have a clue what our business actually does. They're nodding along to something that's totally meaningless and when I wrap up the nonsense you can tell that they want to kick off their shoes and sing Kumbaya. If you're going to do this, you have to be sure that none of your coworkers will burst into laughter and that none of them will tell the clueless manager you were making fun of them.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#74

Post by jon-wood »

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.

I’ve seen the word used in that context at two different UK companies.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#75

Post by ljm »

kilroy_jones wrote: post #34
hyperpallium wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds unaligned. Please report to the Alignment Center at your earliest convenience. Escorts will be available for your use in 20 seconds.

This may not sound the way you intended.

I’ve tried to read that for a solid few minutes and still can’t see what else could have been intended.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#76

Post by bartread »

tomatocracy wrote: post #40
taejo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that this usage is archaic in British business English rather than an innovation! However, it was conserved in business English in India and some other countries, and perhaps the increased interaction between Americans and Indians and in the software industry means you're just exposed to it more often?

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

Not in the circles I run in. If somebody said that in a meeting it would be so weird I'd probably question it because, and particularly in our environment, I'm pretty sure it would confuse everyone.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#77

Post by passer_byer »

pas wrote: post #60
skytreader wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

>As per my last email

As a native English speaker, if I encounter this phrase I take it to suggest I am not paying attention.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#78

Post by frankc »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #63
tomatocracy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The meaning of ex in ex-dividend is not "outside". As originally used in the financial jargon ex-dividend date, ex is used correctly and has the sense "after (in time)". That is, if you buy something ex-dividend, the dividend has already been paid (you're buying after the payment), and so you won't get it. [1] It's sense II in Lewis and Short ( http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... ) (Note s…

Just a minor correction. The ex-date is not necessarily the date it is paid. It is the day after holders of the security are entitled to the dividend. The actual pay date comes later. The important thing is that the price of the security adjusts on the ex-date because the money has now been allocated.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#79

Post by friendlybus »

pas wrote: post #59
friendlybus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

This language is supposed to represent a clear and discussed idea for people to implement and unify around. As soon as the clarity on the meaning is lost, yes it becomes a slimy conformist tool for passing the buck, hiding in the shade of the CEO's bird wing.

Whether or not people are awake to what these words are meant to mean, they still have an impact. Mission statements and company wide training getting you to repeat the words they wish you to say, has an impact on you.

Disrupting and breaking things gives lower rungs of the organization license (when misused) to interrupt progress and deflect technical debt. The further you get from what it is supposed to mean, it can be applied more broadly and in a less targeted fashion, undermining it's original purpose but still having an effect.

Those broad and diluted changes in behaviour that stems from these annoyingly 'untouchable' and 'business speak' words can be beneficial. Were you to need to skip the investment in making proper technically complete products and instead needed to move quickly and could tolerate accruing technical debt, then "installing" the words disruption and breaking things and other buzzwords changes how people talk to each other, how they think in English whilst at work and how they behave when they are unable to guide their own actions past or around certain words.

Railing against buzzwords isn't going to disappear them, taking them out of your conscious perception is only going to make them stronger in directing the flow of business by amplifying the effect of the new wave of words you can't say whilst everyone around you focuses on 'stupidity' instead of 'alignment' (for example). In that case building large systems with less technical debt and more single-purpose easy-to-maintain pieces is much easier when you don't care how 'disruptive' people are and instead care when they are stupid enough to introduce technical debt.

Another day, another past set of cultural tools erased and new ones installed. Say hi to the new boss, same as the old one. It's amazing watching the internet and culture at large walk in conformist lockstep.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#80

Post by coldpie »

ljm wrote: post #75
kilroy_jones wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may not sound the way you intended.

I’ve tried to read that for a solid few minutes and still can’t see what else could have been intended.

"Escorts" is a term for high-end sex workers.
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