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Comment by ketzo | Hacker News Reader

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ketzo·

Oh man, I love that “who do you go to for X?” question. I’m starting as an SWE on Monday, so that’s big on my mind.

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what is SWE?

Software Engineer

More importantly, who do you ask “what is SWE” to?

Seriously in any big company who can you go to ask what acronym $TEXAS means is an important question.

seen this pattern work in two orgs - create an online dictionary through a chat bot interface for acronyms

/wtf

which of course stands for, What The deFine?

In the big company I work for there are several valiantly started and quickly forgotten TLA dictionaries available on various SharePoint sites. Yet none had the few critical ones people were using when I started. Wondered if the popular jargon changed or different groups had splintered their technical talk.

We even have an internal web app. After years, still new acronyms are added every day.

We even have an internal web app. After years, still new acronyms are added every day.

A previous employer had one of these. Submitting a new acronym required a change request and took several weeks to make onto the site. Needless to say, it was useless for its intended purpose.

The thing is every group exclusive TLAs from their local group, from their greater group, their company, their industry, etc. These acronyms can easily conflict and live very different lifespans, making a wide dictionary hard (except for identifying common ones, of course)

It's "Software Engineer" forced awkwardly into a TLA format.

And TLA?

Three Letter Acronym, presumably

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