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Comment by personlurking | Hacker News Reader

As someone not in the corporate world, I'd love to see more examples of bullshit speak.

What are some "favorites" from the HN crowd?

"Learnings" makes me cringe. Why is it a thing? "Lessons" is a perfectly good word. (Edit: see HN examples at https://hn.algolia.com/?query=learnings&sort=byPopularity&pr...)

Many are mentioned in the article. One I particularly loathe is 'reaching out'. In my generation, 'reaching out' is what someone with a serious drug or alcohol dependency did when they hit rock bottom and it was either get help or die. I cringe, I cringe....

A few years ago, it was 'at the end of the day', which my boss said 42 times in one 60 minute meeting. Yes, 42. I counted.

I use at the end of the day; it’s a meaningless verbal tic, less something you could, erm, justify in a business context.

Annoying? Oh yea.

But what is wrong with reaching out? Seems like a different way of phrasing “make contact with”, except with a connotation of intending to help.

I eschew 'reaching out'. It can be replaced by more honest and/or accurate terms. The big problem is that it is part of the problem - people that use this phrase tend to use other occluding language. And people that speak or write that way - as per TFA - tend to do it a lot.

Btw, 'intending to help' I don't think is implied. Naturally you may 'reach out' to provide or offer assistance, but in a business context there should be a business driver for doing the actual contact thing, and then you can choose to specify the context or not.

At the end of the day, all of these phrases aren't that bad, as long as you don't overuse them. eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAaWrdMf-j0

I haven't heard "reaching out" all that often, but the one that makes me cringe is "moving/going/looking forward." I once heard my boss use it 3 times in one sentence (it was something like "going forward, we'll ... and going forward, ... to set expectations going forward.") The surreal experience was further enhanced by the fact that none of the 6 others in the same meeting even seemed to notice or find it unusual.

Aside from overuse in that example you gave, what's the issue you have with "going forward"?

I use language along these lines, often after talking about an issue, as a way of steering the conversation onto solutions. In my experience, it can be a useful phrase.

This one I struggled with. What's the alternative to 'reaching out' in the context of sending a message to a third party?

"Get in touch" could be an alternative. Careful though, don't turn it into a "touch base!"

Call, e-mail, text or otherwise contact them.

'Can you call Bob's surf shop and see if they carry Mr. Zog's Sex Wax?'

Those are specific forms of reaching out. Contact is different but not any more efficient IMO, so I guess we will have to agree to disagree. If I had to direct someone to look into it, I might say --

'Please find out if Bob's surf shop carries Mr. Zog's Sex Wax.'

A few of the terms in the header image on the article seem perfectly appropriate to me depending on context, but I'm probably thinking of them being used literally (reaching out as in contacting, incentivising as in more money paid, deep dive as in RCA) and have insufficient exposure to the BS versions to comment - so, I'll stop!

The reason reach out is used is to give the individual being asked some autonomy / responsibility in the action.

Eg if you ask someone to call bobs surf shop and they don’t answer they might stop there or call back later. If you ask them to reach out they might go down there and see them, set up a meeting, speak to a friend that works there, etc.

If you ask them to reach out they might go down there and see them, set up a meeting, speak to a friend that works there, etc.

That's where you can use the more general and succinct term, "contact".

Only if you like using words incorrectly. "Contact" isn't a verb if you really are the pedantic prescriptivist you are presenting yourself as.

Both Wiktionary and dictionary.com list definitions of "contact" as a verb. I don't have access to the OED at the moment, but I assume they would have it listed as a valid verb as well.

"ask" ?

"can you reach out to Carol and see when that will be done" vs "can you ask Carol when that will be done?"

Ever since Walking Dead came out, "reach out" evokes thoughts of hordes of zombies grabbing for me.

Thank you. I imagined I was all alone in my abhorrence of reaching out.

> "at the end of the day"

there are manager bullshit and verbal tics like the one you mentioned. I tend(ed) to use "long story short..." to force myself to summarize, but when a colleague of mine started to use it over 3 times in a single sentence, I've since stopped using it.

We have too many to count, but some of my favorites:

-Kabuki Dance

-Coal Face

-KT (Knowledge Transfer)

-Across the Piece

-And my personal Rockstar: Like Putting Socks on an Octopus

Our HR group actually put together a wonderful "Leadership" website complete with a "Leadership Handbook" (Buzzword Dictionary). Of course, it's hidden on an obscure sub-site and is unsearchable. I've never met anyone else who's actually seen this site or handbook, but it's been fun for me!

Ah yes, the knowledge transfer! Two wires running from one person's brain to another, "Battlefield Earth" style.

To be fair though, it is straightforward to understand what it means. On the other hand, it took me a while to adjust to "throw under the bus", "rounding error" (a small amount of money), and "up to one's eyeballs".

"Putting socks on an octopus" helped me find a buzzword dictionary online: http://www.theofficelife.com/business-jargon-dictionary-P.ht...

Suggest we take this offline and align first before we come back to you by COB today. Don’t want to boil the ocean, as per my earlier comment.

- "Synergy" is the archetypal word that wasn't even brought up in the article.

- "Cross-functional"

- "Ping"

- "Green Field"

- "ROI" (this actually means something specific, but it's often mis-used to imply something like 'overall value')

- "MVP" (this actually means something but has now been co-opted to sound agile while meaning 'the thing we're willing to release to users and keep our pride')

- "A matrixed organization"

- "Get everyone on the same page"

- "Stakeholders"

... many others...

Again, those only seem like that because you dont understand them:

- Synergy: explained in my other post

- Stakeholders: anyone who holds any power over a decision, even if it isn't formal power

- Everyone on the same page: make sure that everyone has the right context and knows all the important facts to date

- ROI: how much bang you're getting for the buck

- Green Field: building from scratch, without using existing infrastructure (as building a factory on a Green Field), compare to brown field (using existing infrastructure)

- Cross functional: when you're working with engineers and lawyers, aka, people who will absolutely never understand each other

Sure, you could use long phrases to replace any of those, but what's the point?

Don't be confused, ask what it is :)

Good explanations.

However having to ask indicates these phrases communicate poorly. (This obfuscation, as the article states, is intentional.) Instead of "green field", for example, call the project "brand new" or "from scratch". There's no need to concoct additional synonyms in a language that already has so many.

Further reading: - Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" - Musk's "Acronyms Seriously Suck"

> However having to ask indicates these phrases communicate poorly.

No, they actually speed up communication. Sure, to someone outside that area of work, it might seem like poor communication, but that's valid for any profession.

> This obfuscation, as the article states, is intentional.

Might be in some cases, but dismissing all of it as obfuscation is naive.

> Instead of "green field", for example, call the project "brand new" or "from scratch".

No, doesn't have the same meaning. Both "brand new" or "from scratch" might also refer to the design.

Building a "brand new" datacenter "from scratch" doesn't have the same meaning as calling it "a green field project".

Every profession has its own language. Just because you don't understand, doesn't mean it is obfuscation, or inefficient.

I agree that this language can be useful in a specific domain, but you should not underestimate the barriers this creates to actual communication, confusion because you think it means one thing and your colleague thinks it means another, and/or alienating those outside the team that uses it and understands it. This goes for any language, business or otherwise.

This is a real problem, especially for customer facing teams that continue to speak their own language instead of the client's language, and it will destroy your relationships if you do it wrong.

The article is about this language being used to convey expertise when it does not exist (understanding of the language does not imply understanding of the subject you're supposed to know, but may make you sound smart in a meeting).

Obviously feel free to keep using the terms if they work for you, but do so while also knowing the impact of the words.

TL;DR: Words matter, sounds like you are of the same opinion :) As long as we use them purposefully and understand the trade-offs, all good.

I've worked in consulting for most of my career and have a deep understanding of the meaning of these terms - but thanks for your definitions. The whole point is to make people feel silly for having to ask, even if you just made up the term.

The whole point of the article was that business created / re-purposed a number of these things to mean something specific to _business_ rather than using regular words. The parent poster asked for some favorite examples of this, so I provided them.

I am not saying that I think all these words are worthless in a corporate context, but if you trotted out some of this during a bar discussion you might get laughed at. All disciplines have their own languages, and to really know it you should speak it, but sometimes this is used to hilarious effect.

"Hey - quick ask: can I link up with you tomorrow at 6 to talk fantasy baseball?"

"Yeah, let me ping my stakeholders and make sure I can get a block for some real ideation, you know, deep work."

"Alright. I'll take an action to get it on your calendar, and will capture learnings / best practices in a deck and send via email so we can circle back with the rest of the league."

"Great, thanks."

And since when is that exclusive to business? Pretty much every single profession does that. How many times have I heard other engineers using lingo to say bs? Countless.

Every single profession has its own language, and they all use it to keep outsiders out.

But apparently most people here in HN can't understand business lingo, so they just assume it is all bs.

Just look at the example you gave. I don't know about you, but I've never seen anyone use business lingo like that.

But I bet you could say the same bullshit using eng speak: "oh, hang on, I need to ping all the other peers, make sure they're up and running then run a distributed consensus algorithm to achieve sync and schedule the processes".

Pure bullshit.

Re: "Stakeholders", I don't think it has to mean someone who holds power over a decision, but rather someone who is affected by a decision and thereby has a vested interest in it. Though this is orthogonal to the power: they might have power as well.

Someone who is affected but has zero influence over a decision isn't in the way I most commonly see it being used a stakeholder.

If HR decides to lay you off, you're probably not a stakeholder.

But I agree that YMMV, and I see how it could also be used in the way you suggest.

The best example of Stakeholder is a director who a teammate presented a project to before taking it to the VP. The director said:

- I don't agree with this project, but it isn't my decision. But I'm a trusted advisor of the VP.

One of the best classes I ever had was called "Power and Politics in Organizations", and dealt with identifying, managing and using power in organizations. Power comes from many different sources (information, money, influence, friendship, knowledge, formal authority, etc.), and managing is one of the most important learnings when working in any organization with more than 2 people.

Sadly, most engineers overlook those skills and focus only on "hard" skills, which I personally find to be far easier than "soft" skills (which are hard as hell to master, IMHO).

Having moved from engineering to management, I can attest that at least some of these terms have specific meanings where I work, except when they're abused. It's just that they used to sound like nonsense when I weren't faced with management responsibilities.

KT - the expectation is that the recipient should be able to perform the conductor's responsibilities after the knowledge transfer.

Stakeholder - there is a very specific group of people (mostly VP and above) that fall into this category. They need to be "kept in the loop" (another bullshit word, I suppose) when major changes to features, resources or business strategy are made.

ROI - for us, this boils down to a number, either in dollars or an expected change in a KPI (another bullshit term?)

On the same page - when a meeting/mail thread is started with this intent, the idea is that multiple teams with different/conflicting priorities need to agree on something so that they won't later claim "why weren't we told about this?"

Going forward - it's better than saying "from now on", which feels like a finger-wag to me

Synergy - yup, it's mostly bullshit

Huh. For us, cross functional means very specifically that backend, mobile, and frontend engineers are on the same team (previously there was a backend team, a frontend team, and a mobile team, and getting a major feature done required coordinating all three).

Get on the same page is one I use. As is stakeholders. I find that sometimes they are the words that best communicate what I need to communicate, usually in the context of setting up a meeting. "We need to get on the same page with this" is a diplomatic way of saying "You don't get what's going on, or I don't understand what you are doing and we need to figure out what the end goal is and how we are going to go about it". And stakeholders is a convenient shorthand for "everyone affected by this project".

It makes me wonder how much corporate bullshit I hear is actually better communication.

Ah! MVP has lost any meaning. Better use PoC (proof of concept) because an MVP is just a finished product with all the bells and whistles because "product management" wants it all

I have a new favorite sentence for the ones I've heard lately: "There's a world where there's a solve for that ask."

"There's a world where..." replaces "Imagine if..." or "It's possible that...", and I think it's actually a neat way of presenting an idea -- if used very sparingly.

"Solve" and "ask", in this context, replace the words "solution" and "request". I'm not sure how people started abusing these words, but it's pervasive in my industry. I suspect it follows the recent trend of "nouning" verbs (a reverse-Calvin thing to do: https://i.imgur.com/l5AC4qG.jpg) like using "gift" as an action verb ("they gifted me a calendar"). I can understand that because there isn't an equivalent alternative word in English. We could just say "give", but it doesn't have the same meaning as "give as a gift". "Solve" and "ask" are nouns that already have suitable traditional words to use instead!

I applied once as an intern to a company that "offered innovate solutions" to "deliver value to customers." At no point on their entire website did they use the phrase "PR Firm." Turns out no one thought to mention that on the website. Apparently they specialized in public figures who got into scandals, which is actually super interesting and I might have done better at the interview if I had known what the fuck they did.

The worst I've seen so far are posters with mindless and vulgar motivation propaganda such as "Bullshit-free Zone" and "Get Shit Done" [1]. These seem to be popular with a customer of mine who went all-in on SCRUM last year (believe me, you haven't seen anything yet if you haven't worked in a German team throwing around everyday or pseudo English terms in an attempt to appear cool).

[1]: https://www.startupvitamins.com/

if I may chime in on the last bit, because I sensesed a sense hostility

> pseudo english terms

isn't that just the english language? A mix of norse, french, latin, alotta patoise and irish and ... just sudo english

> sudo english

This inspired me: I'm am now renaming /bin/sudo to /bin/pseudo

It probably is, but there are pseudo-English idioms in use that just hurt. For example, "public viewing" is used in German for featuring sports events on large screens in the public, "handy" is used for mobiles, etc. See https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/40586/why-do-germ... for a discussion about this phenomenon.

He, I think we just find it super cold like but not quite (ie cool) to copy from our thought leaders.

At work we are now prohibited from using ‘space’ as a vague term for business, industry, market, or profession.

Personally, I find the use of ‘architecting’ instead of ‘design’ to be particularly irritating.

"Ask" as a noun.

http://dack.com/web/bullshit.html

> What are some "favorites"

I will leave that to others, but one thing I will say is that having been around the business world since the early 80's I can typically date someone just by hearing what expressions and bullshit they use. Anything that we didn't use in the 80's appears strange to hear. For example back then we didn't use 'circle back' (and now I can't even remember what we used for that I think it was simply 'I wanted to get back in touch with you'..) And yes I know circle back has been around for a long time (could even have been late 80's or early 90's).

To someone who isn't in the corporate world, the job title "agile coach" is about as bullshit as anything out there.

People in this role are actually paid to walk around inside an organisation, finding things that aren't sufficiently 'agile' and coaching people on how to make them 'agile'. Concrete deliverables=none, ability to measure success=none, ability to achieve any actual tangible outcome whatsoever=none, ability to invoke apparently-meaningful-yet-utterly-irrelevant anecdotes=infinite.

'Experts' in this field are highly in demand, and held in fear &/or awe at many corporates.

For me, the "favorites" are "engage" and "socialize". As a fresh example, Microsoft "engaged" with open-source community to the point they almost drove .NET into the ground. They "socialized" with crowds via GitHub while doing really stupid things like platform segmentation, misrepresenting alpha-quality releases as production-ready ones etc.

Kaizen terms used in teams or organizations where kaizen is definitely not being practiced as a general philosophy. At a previous employer, the only time anyone ever actually used the word kaizen was to describe management being tied up in day-long meetings debating the nature or source of some problem.

I suggest watching the clips of meeting scenes from the BBC show W1A: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=w1a+meeting

I hadn't heard of this show before reading the article and aim to watch it. Thanks

That show isn't a documentary. It's far too watered down.

all the words from scrum: Standups, sprint, dailies, retrospectives, epics, tasks..

My "favourite" is "re-imagining".

For example, "reimagining customer service", as in, complementing 20yo kids hired for peanuts offshore with bloated and expensive contact centre software.

A former boss once scheduled a meeting to discuss another meeting later that day. The subject of the meeting was "Pre-meeting discussion".

Have these people never heard of an agenda?

I've seen this done where you want a 10 min meeting to get all the developers on the same wavelength before a meeting with the business so everyone will contribute in way that will drive a point forward. Usually this is when moving through security checkpoints for new features / systems.

Kind of like going through TSA "nobody make any jokes I don't want to have to spend hours here explaining this."

never-ending sales strategy changes that can be summed up as "explain the product to the right people and ask for money".

We don't want to do it unless it's going to move the needle.

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