Let’s have a lunch and learn!
Flywheel. Stop.
Please socialise the requirement throughout your teams
Actionable. Ugh.
Referring to people, staff as resources. Nice and dehumanizing.
An old line manager referred to me as a resource in front of me once. I should have told her to fuck off.
The Q3 numbers have a life of their own. Growing, shrinking, zig zagging all over the place. Pushing needles, pulling levers. And fyi, the roi is tbd. high five synergy!
This sounds like an Eric Andre sketch
There are many but I find “let’s double-click on that” particularly grating
I always reply with, “Or we could right-click on that to see our options”.
I’ve never heard that one. What does that mean?
It means let’s take a closer look at a problem or project. Sounds like a Microsoftism
Cheers. I might use that one next time I’m in a meeting with the BAs haha
I heard “rightsizing” for the first time last year.
I have no idea what knucklehead PR dumbass came up with that but it made the following layoffs even more unpalatable.
The only time I hear rightsizing is for cloud resources. I’ve never heard of it in human resources. That sucks.
Alright, team, let’s circle back and ensure we’re fully aligned on our north star objectives. We need to leverage synergy, engage in blue-sky thinking, and touch base on our pain points to drive mission-critical outcomes. But let’s not boil the ocean with unnecessary jargon - at the end of the day, we need to optimize our bandwidth for real, value-driven impact. If we keep moving the needle with this kind of thought leadership theater, we risk losing sight of our core competencies and drowning in a sea of meaningless buzzwords. Let’s pivot toward clear, actionable insights and sunset the overuse of strategic messaging before it becomes a blocker to true innovation. Instead of just playing the fast-follow game with every trending framework, let’s focus on original, high-impact execution that actually drives results.
Thoughts?Chris, do you have any builds?No?
Good. Then let’s action this and drive it across the finish line!
Jesus fucking Christ. This was excellently written and horribly real.
Other than the lack of a “shift left” it’s just about perfect.
Thanks. It hit close to home. I hate it.
Perfect except for ‘Thoughts?’ Instead of that it should be an appeal to the speaker’s boss: ‘Chris, do you have any builds?’
Done. 😁
I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Lol
“Good catch!”
Usually said when you bring up something that needs fixing, and said as a way to puff you up and not actually follow up on the problem.
Synergy
Mostly because I have never heard it used correctly in the context of a copprate speech/talk.
Does it mean the same thing in corporate as in balatro
I don’t play Balatro but from what I know about it, the game probably uses it correctly, unless it has nothing to do with, like, playing two cards that work better when used together.
In corpo speak. I’ve seen it used as a synonym for “energy.” Like after the crowd quiets down, “Wow! The synergy in the air tonight is electric!” makes me cringe so hard.
Bio break.
I don’t think I have to elaborate on that one.
I work at a school and that one gets used sometimes. A lady that helps us develop programming said it quite often and my colleagues picked it up, I don’t use it myself.
This is a gamer term. I’ve never heard it in a business environment. Even as a IT engineer.
Lucky you, it’s all over my company.
I heard teachers use that term. 🤷♂️
I like it because it’s so vague.
A nap is pretty biological! And nobody will ask why your bio break was an hour long.
Thats not so much a corpo thing as a gamer thing IMO.
“AFK, Bio break” is much quicker to type.
Quicker than “brb, bathroom”?
“brb”
I never heard a gamer use “bio break” lol
Uh. It’s been used for YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAARS in MMOs.
^ usually just “brb bio” or “afk bio”, or just “bio”.
Its seriously old, like, “woot” or “LFG” levels of old.
Makes sense! I haven’t played a real-time MMO since RuneScape was new! Haha
Huh. I literally only know this from the context of mmo games.
TIL where that is from
fuck. i hate this one the most.
just say “break.” let everyone else decide for themselves if it needs to be biological in nature.
- Ideate
- Ask (noun)
- Table
Does “tabling” mean putting a subject on the table or taking it off?
“That’s a big ask” drives me crazy. I’ve been hearing it everywhere lately. When did ‘ask’ become a noun?
A huge ask. The biggliest ask. Sir Mixalot dreams about this ask.
Tabling means to save for later. You put it in the table to deal with it another time.
So tabling it means it’s off the table?
Think of it as you’re holding a bag of groceries. You are going to put things away in the bag, but maybe some things need to go somewhere else so you pull it out of the bag and put it on the table to put it away later.
You’ve tabled it.
Is this different from putting it in the parking lot?
Lets park this discussion for now, we’ll circle back to it later.
Yup
- Alignment
- Scalable
- Circle back
If you use these regularly I KNOW the meeting you just booked me into should have been an email.
Touch base too
FUCK touching base that one’s the worst.
Huh why scalable? I feel like that applies to a lot of things, not just the corporate world.
I can’t remember last time I heard someone use it in a normal conversation, but in the corporate world I find it gets incredibly overused.
It’s fine is used properly, but management tends to use it to mean “magically gooder.”
I guess it doesn’t bug me so much because it’s not so cringe and actually clearly communicates the point. We do in-house video editing at the company I work at, and when we talk about scaling we’re talking about making sure our processes hold when we add more and more people and increase our volume. It’s a growing company so I have to constantly talk about anticipating and buying things to make sure we don’t run into a wall with our growth.
I guess this is less pushing back and more asking what word you would rather see?
I always hated “circle back” but I did get into using it ironically for a while.
I wouldn’t actually mind “circle back” if it wasn’t just used as cover to kick the can down the road.
For me the guy who always said it was a former boss and he was good at actually circling back, but sometimes it felt more like “fuck that for now.”
“let’s just put a pin in that, and circle back to it later”
Every meeting should be a fucking email.
I always want to do things by email instead of a meeting, but have to admit the meeting is often necessary. Of course it wouldn’t be if people could actually read and comprehend a detailed email and if they could also actually communicate information into writing without expecting you to be their minds enough to make sense of the incomplete vague phases they hurriedly type.
I spend more time in meetings talking about the work I’m going to do, than doing the actual fucking work.
Bro I have my first “big company” job after working smaller places for over a decade. This feels so real. I’m dying.
Unless there is a need for faster communication or because it covers a topic that people have strong emotions about and need to see how others respond so they don’t assume the other person’s feelings about something. There are some cases where humans, being social animals, do need some interaction beyond words to accomplish coordinated tasks.
The vast majority of meetings should be emails though. Just wish people actually read emails…
AI
But specifically “How could we use AI?”. If you dont know you don’t need it. Also looking st you big tech.
“Tribal knowledge.”
- image: We, clan. Together, strong.
- reality: Ask Tommy if he remembers how to reset the printer
Though, I actually like this one. It’s a pretty cool phrase you can use anywhere.