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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

#81

Post by lonelappde »

MatekCopatek wrote: post #36
Droobfest wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just effective communication though? I don't understand why your post is phrased so negatively. Some buzzwords have a sort of standardised meaning across a company so everyone knows what you're talking about. "We agreed that delighting clients is important and I argue that I can better optimize it by not attending" There is nothing wrong with this? Sure I'd agree customer satisfaction is a much better word fo…

I disagree, what I would want to say in such a situation is simply "this meeting is useless, let me get back to work", but I would be percieved as a grumpy developer with an attitude. I wouldn't call all the sugarcoating effective communication as I expect everyone in the company to understand that not wasting people's time will let them do more work and benefit the customer in the end.

The personal hosting the meeting thinks it's not useless, so flatly disagreeing without a rationale is useless.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#82

Post by lonelappde »

Doches wrote: post #8

I love Matt Levine's take on this: > From my time in investment banking I can easily believe that most investment banking transactions occur because investment bankers are pretending to do what investment bankers do, acting out scenes from “Liar’s Poker” until they start to seem real. I don’t know why investment banking would be different from any other industry. So sure, yeah, work is a kind of pretense.

What did bankers do before Liars Poker? If Liars poker didn't reflect reality, why did he write it?

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#83

Post by lonelappde »

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 someone who guides you somewhere.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#84

Post by lonelappde »

cormacrelf wrote: post #70

There was a great piece on this yesterday by Molly Young. In my opinion, it was significantly better. It contained this excellent point: > As the leaked Slacks make clear, Korey, as well as her employees, were working under the new conditions of surveillance-state capitalism (or, from the company’s perspective, a culture of “inclusion and transparency”). One reason for the uptick in garbage language is exactly this s…

And this has always been true in PR and board room battles, but now is seeping to everwhere. Perhaps the rank and file will start to understand how execs and politicians have always suffered from the microscope.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#85

Post by tomatocracy »

frankc wrote: post #78
thaumasiotes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ex date is the first day when the security trades without rights to the dividend (or rights, or coupon etc). It's not the day when holders are entitled to the dividend because if you trade on a particular day, you don't own the securities until settlement occurs which is on a later day (different markets have different conventions here for how much later). The company/issuer will have a record date for administrative purposes when they take a snapshot of the ownership register so the ex date is the first date on which settlement will take place after that record date. The payment date may even be some weeks after this but is set by the company but this isn't really relevant to when the ex date is.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#86

Post by homonculus1 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #42
cosmodisk wrote: post #6

I had a "pleasure" to work briefly for Lionbridge when they acquired the company I worked for. We used to get these company wide emails about various things. You read it,sit and then think how can someone rape the language to a such degree. It was written in English but felt like alien language. The amount of bullshit one manages to squeeze in a sentence is quite astonishing. In my opinion, the main reason behind all…

Or that their true intentions / feelings would be exposed. I mean, "management wanted to curtail redundancies in the human resources area, and so, many workers are no longer viable members of the workforce" sounds much nicer than "yeah we fired a bunch of people".

Exactly, it's verbal defense-in-depth. When language has multiple layers of vagueness, you have to actively approach the real meaning through interpretation. Only the staunchly disagreeable are inclined to have a negative reaction through multiple iterations of reading between the lines, and if they speak up they get singled out as not-team-players or even cranks and kooks. The rest filter it through an attitude of generosity, desire for positivity, and benefit of doubt, so when they get the message its emotional weight is dampened, and they are in a suitable frame of mind to accept it with resignation.

In short it's pure manipulation of your own tendencies for social cooperation. Perhaps a bit colorful to say on HN but--it's fucking disgusting. And multiple fields of high-paying professions consist entirely of doing this effectively, up to the scale of entire nations.

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#87

Post by frankc »

tomatocracy wrote: post #85
frankc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ex date is the first day when the security trades without rights to the dividend (or rights, or coupon etc). It's not the day when holders are entitled to the dividend because if you trade on a particular day, you don't own the securities until settlement occurs which is on a later day (different markets have different conventions here for how much later). The company/issuer will have a record date for administra…

I think we are in agreement?

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#88

Post by [deleted] »

lonelappde wrote: post #82
Doches wrote: post #8

I love Matt Levine's take on this: > From my time in investment banking I can easily believe that most investment banking transactions occur because investment bankers are pretending to do what investment bankers do, acting out scenes from “Liar’s Poker” until they start to seem real. I don’t know why investment banking would be different from any other industry. So sure, yeah, work is a kind of pretense.

What did bankers do before Liars Poker? If Liars poker didn't reflect reality, why did he write it?

[deleted]

Re: Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

#89

Post by skytreader »

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.)

> Isn't this just the "As I've written in my last letter" for the e-mail era?

It might as well be. It just always struck me as wrong usage, for lack of better term. "Per", to me, is always in the sense of "for each": per month, per head, etc.

That said, I decided to look it up. And quoting from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/as%20per:

> Is It Grammatically Correct to Say _as per_?

> ...The more ponderous as per is often found in business and legal prose, or in writing that attempts to adopt a formal tone. It is not incorrect to use, but some find it overly legalistic and counsel avoiding it for that reason. On the other hand, it has been used to good effect in facetious mock-business-English ("as per the President’s shiny new Environmental Policy Act"). ...

Looks like I'm not the only one who was puzzled by this turn of phrase. You learn new things everyday. :)

(edit: formatting)

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