May 29 2008
Workplace Jargon
Working in IT can be a soul-depleting experience, but it’s also a constant annoyance to the English major that lurks inside me.
The following are words and phrases that I do not ever want to hear again in the workplace. In my experience, the number of these spouted by a person is inversely proportional to that person’s grasp on reality. Most of these words fail to convey meaning and in some cases even contort the meaning the speaker is attempting to convey. In that sense, they serve only to self-aggrandize.
I’ll even go one step further, and posit that the use of these phrases functions as a kind of doublespeak, encouraging people in a workplace to develop their own insular culture and ignore reality. It is just this kind of disregard for reality that keeps the incredibly wasteful modern IT industry functioning as it does.
action item (noun phrase) – This is a phrase without purpose. People that are too important to receive “assignments” receive “action items.”
bandwidth (noun) – No, not in the literal sense — as a synonym for “time”, as in “I don’t have the bandwidth to do that right now.”
best practice (noun phrase) – But it really means “current practice,” because the best practices are constantly being revised. What’s the point? If there was a better way of doing something and we knew about it, we’d already be doing it!
circle back (verb phrase) – Because “meet again” just isn’t good enough. How about the single-word alternative “regroup”? This one has always reminded me a bit of “circling back” covered wagons.
close the loop (verb phrase) – Even “follow up”, which is jargon-y in and of itself, would be less insulting to the listener’s intelligence than this inept metaphor.
critical path (noun phrase) – I still haven’t figured out what this means, except for “important.” It’s not even used sensibly: people say “this assignment is a critical path.”
cycles (plural noun) – See bandwidth.
drink the kool-aid (verb phrase) – Is it worse that this phrase raises the specter of mass suicide, or that it suggests that everyone is insane except you (hint: they probably aren’t)? Besides, it was Flavor-Aid. If you’re going to be tacky, at least be correct.
dovetail (verb) – Your accomplishments are not physically capable of dovetailing. Two documents cannot dovetail unless you fold them. The word you’re looking for is “join” or “align”, but I guess those don’t sound smart enough.
gain traction (verb phrase) – “Succeed” would do nicely, and would convey just as much. This one irritates me especially for some reason.
get one’s ducks in a row (verb phrase) – Maybe this phrase only exists because “get your s*** together” is too obscene for the workplace. Either way, it basically contributes nothing to a conversation. “Get ready” would be adequate, and colorful speech isn’t so colorful when you use the same stupid idioms as everyone else.
iterate (verb) – I’m fine with something being an “iterative process”, for the record, even though there are better words than “iterative.” My issue is with people who say “let me go iterate on that and get back to you.” Apparently we can’t admit to having to think about things. Also, every time someone says they’re going to go iterate, I have to stifle a little giggle.
offline (adjective) – As in, “Let’s discuss this offline.” Perfectly sensible, if a bit obnoxious, in a conference call, but I’ve heard it used in face-to-face group meetings where no one is “online” at all.
represents (verb) – Sometimes things really do represent other things, but in the lexicon of the pointy-haired this word generally just means “is.” I have actually seen a document, called “The ABC Plan”, which opens with the sentence, “This document represents the ABC Plan.” The person who wrote that sentence was either splitting hairs at a René Magritte level, or they were just too smart and important to use two-letter words. My vote is for the latter.
solutions (plural noun) – Grade A B.S. Of course you produce solutions — if you didn’t no one would pay you. But not everything is a solution. A document is not a solution. Ten lines of code is not a solution. Besides, any company that needs to produce more than one solution to a given problem is doing it wrong.
top-down/bottom-up (adjective) – Might actually mean something if they were used properly, which they almost never are. If you used “analysis” and “synthesis”, which are good old-fashioned words to describe the exact same things, you might even sound smarter.
touch base with (verb phrase) – Unless you and the object of the preposition are playing baseball, this just makes you sound stupid. Or mildly perverted.
Oh, this could go on for ever.
“Work” as in “Let’s work our actions”
“Definitized” — pure gobbledygook
“Biological break”, abbreviated as “bio break” as in “Let’s take a 10 minute biological break”.
“Solutions Architect” – we used to call these engineers. Of course, we now call sysadmins engineers. Grade inflation. I’ve even heard the title “Solutions Executive”. que?
“Vet” – “Let me vet that with my solutions architect” – And if you listen closely, you’ll find it’s often mispronounced as “vent”, which can be a little humorous.
“Ping” – this one has quickly moved to something sinister. Six months ago we pinged someone to see if they were available, pretty benign. Now I hear people say, “I’m going to have to ping Bob to make sure he works his actions.”
And an oldie but goody. I still hear “facilitate” way too much. To me, it implies something important – “The State Department will facilitate the Pope’s dinner with Idi Amin.”, but instead “Bob facilitated the meeting.”, which meant Bob made sure the lights were turned on and there were chairs and markers. Sheesh, Bob could have at least brought cookies or something.
When ::I:: was in a position of leadership, there were cookies or brownies or cupcakes at every meeting. Because that’s how I facilitate. My goal was also to make meetings as short as possible, thus facilitating everyone being able to watch their favorite TV shows.
One of our managers has a big bowl of really crappy candy he brings to meetings he expects to be awful. Everyone knows what to expect when they see the candy bowl. It really works pretty well as a tool to set expectations. The more difficult the meeting, the faster the candy bowl spins around the table. He told me a few years ago he spends $500 / year on candy.
it will now be my lives work to find a way to incorporate the phrase “caulk the wagon and float it” into workplace jargon.
That’s funny, because I was trying to work “caulk the wagon and float it” into my snarky comments on “circle back” when I was writing this post, and I couldn’t quite make it work.
Guess our minds went the same place. Good ol’ Oregon Trail.
look at us, always finishing each other’s sandwiches…
No, no, you ruined it. If you’d just put “finishing each other’s…” I would totally have come in here and put “Sandwiches?”.
Arrested Development FTW.
hot ham water on you, my friend.