Commonly used idioms in the tech industry
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And that might not be true of the more important activity. It's a procrastination-like thing: let's convince ourselves we're being productive planning this trivial thing while the other big, scary, difficult thing lurks behind us ominously...
Cleaning my desk or going through my inbox instead of doing whatever needs to be done is just my brain cargo-culting "working at a computer in an office", not unlike a toddler imitating grown-ups. At this point it's very useful to train yourself to talk to somebody about what you need to do, or write a list of the steps you need to take and keep breaking it into smaller parts, until you find it's easier to do what you were about to write than to write it.
It's a classic trick, I call it "starting with a corner", from when you were a child and you had to color the entire background with blue -- it was so off-putting, even if you knew /how/ to do it, it was so much work. But if you start with a corner, at least you got somewhere.
Two tricks in my bag for this:
1. Exactly you already said: "write a list of the steps you need to take and keep breaking it into smaller parts" :)
2. Play competing heel-dragging tasks against each other, when possible.
Almost never do the structural elements of good code organization get discussed. Instead we wrap around the axle arguing about things like bracket placement and whitespace. Usually in a manner which damages team cohesiveness rather than building it.
It doesn't matter what conventions you adopt. But not adopting any creates unnecessary friction.
You can reduce the white space conversation to picking a good code formatted. But no formatted is going to fix your nightmare code that you claim is “self documenting”. Fuck that guy. Or better, fire him. Get that weak sauce outta here.
It's related, because that shortage of expertise is what leads the committee to spend more time on the bikeshed's paintjob than on the safety of the reactor. Everyone's an expert on bikesheds.
1. You need component X to carry out the original task
2. To get component X, you need to do something else
3. Several steps of recursion later, you end up shaving a yak - an activity that's unrelated whatsoever to the original task, but is still a dependency.
Ultimately the same underlying meaning, but quite a different illustrative scenario.
While writing this I found a lot of opposing definitions (as mentioned with bus factor). I've also heard "Don't shave the yak!" as part of the definition you gave for yak shaving.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll incorporate this too to make it more complete.
It's only oiling the drawer that demonstrates true yak-shaving, since he then has to buy more oil and fix the car.
1. orthogonal - "Well, this issue is orthogonal to that issue"
2. impedance mismatch - "I think we have a bit of an impedance mismatch here. We want this but all we have is that."
E.g. performance and security of the system both relate to that system but each dimension can be worked on or discussed without necessarily impacting the other.
Our team uses it quite organically and humbly (and not excessively) but yes it absolutely is a candidate for use in an affected manner rather than a genuine one.
Chief Justice Roberts: “I’m sorry. Entirely what?”
“Orthogonal,” the lawyer replied. “Right angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant.”
Justice Scalia: “What was that adjective? I liked that."
“I think we should use that in the opinion,” Scalia later added.
“Or the dissent,” said Roberts.
https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_word_o...
Edit: Live quote. Most recent Scott Locklin:
A friend of mine tested positive for ‘rona antibodies; he felt a bit run down and wondered if he had been exposed. He had been (modulo false positives).
Looks like everyone has their own interpretation of these tells.
This is one of those things university ought to teach but they don't.
And "no" is a complete sentence. I know, chain of command and authority and the like is hard to rebel against, costs energy and brain space, but I think in the example given, the artist should be the authority on what is in an animation, not the PM. They are entitled to an opinion of course and to voice it, but they would be one voice among many.
The Queen's Duck is a catchier name though! [1] https://lifehacker.com/use-the-hairy-arm-technique-to-deal-w...
Can’t find a source, but it was relayed to me as a technique in negotiating a contract for videography. You would put together a contract that includes normal shots and one extraneous, really expensive aerial/helicopter shot. If the client doesn’t notice - cool, you get to do a fun helicopter shot. If they do notice, it can give them something to negotiate away - making them feel accomplished, while you still land a contract with the important shots.
In the Queen's Duck, the extra work gets done in a way that's easy to undo, so management can add their value by telling you to remove it. The artist gets more control of the queen animation instead of tweaking the color, shape, etc. because management wants something to do.
In Helicopter, the additional work is just a proof of concept, to ease negotiations. It's not about having control and making work easier down the line, it's about picking a moonshot, and maybe having fun with it, but at least getting the contract under the terms you want because they're probably going to cut the helicopter, which leaves you with the contract you would have agreed to in the first place.
That's sometimes referred to as a distractor, or as "Combat Barbie."
https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-Draftin...
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/13/free-army-hel... is the ancestor of the phrase.
"We have a few asks for your team". - ie: we need something from you.
From what I have heard, this came out of Microsoft at some point. As engineers and managers drifted between companies, it became pretty common across Lake Washington over at Amazon. I can only hope appropriate quarantine procedures are followed to keep it contained in the Seattle region, but I suspect there are cases spreading globally at this point.
I don't even know what it is that I hate about it. It's perfectly reasonable as a word, and usually I'm a linguistic descriptivist. But ugh, that word.
The company does have a lot of ex-amazons as well.
It's funny to see how these new phrases/keywords are born. I've been in the software industry for ~15 years now (longer than some, shorter than others), I always get amused when I see new phrases gaining traction and spreading. It's like a verbal pandemic, from a certain point of view.
Not gonna lie, seeing “ex-amazons” instead of “ex-amazonians” definitely gave me a light chuckle and a mental image of incredibly tall giant women who somehow decided to quit being amazons and ended up becoming of a rather average height.
Specifically, I'm talking about the "ask" noun meaning "request for work". "My team has 10 outstanding asks from the billing team, but we don't report to their VP so we can deprioritize 8 of them".
I would hope that in that context, you don't presume that I mean one of the two definitions you've posted :)
c1275 (▸?a1200) Laȝamon Brut (Calig.) (1963) l. 529 Eouer axe ich eow leue.
Almost as poor a choice as "What learnings did we get from this experience"? that has emerged as corporate speak.
There is something unsettling about the word "lessons" missing from a persons vocabulary.
Don't invent a new word when there's a perfectly good one already available.
"What's the difference between a learning and a lesson?" would be another good question.
An "ask" is part of a business negotiation, a "request" is usually interpersonal. An "ask" invites a conversation about what it will take to make it happen (money, etc.) while a "request" invites acceptance or rejection.
A bit like the quote from yes minister
"That's very brave of you, minister. An extremely courageous decision,"
followed up by the explanation
"Oh, yes! "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes". "Courageous" means "this will lose you the election"!"
The one I dislike is "issue" as in "we have some issues". No, you mean "we have some problems". But "issue" just sounds nicer than "problem", I guess. That one is thoroughly lost.
Typically, recruiters try to setup 4 interviewees with 4 interviewers. You 'loop' through them, like speed dating. It's "an interview loop".
At least, that's my interpretation.
(A single "no hire" and you'd not get hired.)
I find all of this sort of thing; "blue sky thinking", "touch base", "leverage", "reach out" "deliverables" and so on, to be substitutes for clarity and real meaning. Just speak clearly and like a normal person please! Quite apart from murdering the language you often find that, whilst this sort of speech sounds clever on the surface, it's often hiding vagueness and half-baked thoughts. It gives the illusion of substance.
"Lets touch base offline on those key deliverables when we have enough bandwidth and ensure our thinking is joined up". Makes me think of David Brent from The Office!
"ensure we're in alignment"
Sigh.
I am frankly surprised that there are not more noun/verb overloading examples in our field. Once you've verb'ed architect while also using it as a noun, every similar process seems like small potatoes. Or maybe it's just "architecture" that's odd. For example, "implementor(s)", "implement", "implementation". No problems there. Somehow, the thing that architects do ("design" or "design architecture") got lost, and we verb'ed it.
What would you like to see instead so I can make it right?
* "We" instead of "I". on StackOverflow "how do we reverse a string?"
* "showstopper", no matter how trivial a thing is, it will be a showstopper for someone: "the lack of a dark theme is a showstopper"
* "workflow", no matter how trivial an activity is, it will be someone's workflow
I usually notice this with english as a second language speakers, it's probably a more innocent mistake than people choosing a word like "workflow" or "bandwidth".
What about "we" instead of "you"? E.g., "Can we change the color of this button to blue?"... "Yes, I can do that."
It used to bother me, but when you're in the position of telling other people what to do, I suppose it sounds less demanding.
I used to work for a big web site that produced standardized requirements documents ahead of every project. Part of the standard was the "flexibility matrix": the PM or "stakeholder" who was producing the requirements document was supposed to identify whether scope or timeline was most flexible. Of course, for about five years running after the standard document template came out, every project was "least flexible" on timeline and "most flexible" on scope.
We finally started calling them on their impossible timelines and tried flexing the scope by pushing some of the vague requirements off to later releases. The result? They added another column to the "flexibility matrix" called "resources", as in they were willing to hire more people to meet all the requirements in the mandated timeline.
That was also not true.
On calls I will try to use their first name, unless there are multiple people with the same first name there as well. Then I just refer to people by the NATO phonetic alphabet of their last name. I do ask for their permission before I do so though, I'm not trying to be a jerk :)
Same thing with email rules prioritizing mail that has the recipient on the To: line.
In a DM, if I tell you @fred can help you if you have any questions, you can now hover to see Fred's availability status, and click to message them.
An added benefit is that these tags track the user's displayed name. If Fred changes their name to Francine, the places where you've tagged Francine in the past will update automatically. You can also search for places where users are mentioned this same way.
I think that may be tricky to determine as word tend to spread like viruses. One person hears something and wither knows or looks up the word in context, then starts using the word.
Google fu may tell you when a phrase started being searched for frequently.
When we talk about the creation of neologisms like this, we often put them into various categories: sometimes they're simpler than the previous idiom, sometimes they're more complex/nuanced, often they can act as some sort of shibboleth, but it's all after-the-fact analysis, I don't think there's any real rules.
Don't 86 my 420 history
Examples include adminisphere, appeasement engineer, articulizer, balloon help (now mansplaining), bit flip (a personal favorite)…worth a gander. Honor your nerd heritage and revive some of the words the ancients used before the dot-com bubble.
"Proof of Concept."
"Ohhhh..."
Sometimes its awkward, sometimes it is fitting.
I had the misfortune earlier in my career of working for a total megalomaniac chair-flipper. One time he described some fairly vague product concept and I said, "ok, let me put together a proof of concept". He blew his stack and said, "no, I don't want a proof of concept I want a working product!"
Of course if you're developing one and you mention the PoS POC you could end up in hot water.
Bikeshedding -- in a past large enterprise that I worked, bikeshedding was most frequently employed in staff meetings that involved multiple levels of management. Middle-management and administrative staff would inject (often extremely project-disruptive) ideas into non-trivial things[0], but things "they understood enough to talk about" in an attempt to appear that they had a deeper understanding of the project. Thankfully, upper management was solid and saw through it, consistently.
[0] Small bullet point to move a task co-ordination database from its MSSQL version to a supported version ends up in an explanation of why our "Data Warehousing Solution" can't solve this problem for us ... it's hard to reason with someone when you're coming from a place of knowledge, and they're in that same place, just in some other universe where things don't mean what they mean here ... I remember "Data Lake" and making a quip about drowning, insulting the guy accidentally but not suffering any fallout.
10x too much? Or a couple of orders of magnitude too many?
OMG Engineering.
It annoys me, because science journalists are reporting on the spread of a pandemic, which absent controlling factors actually does grow exponentially. So having degraded the term, they now lack a word to describe a quantity whose rate of growth is proportional to its magnitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_Hole_in_My_Bucket#...
Looks like the idea for the song goes back to at least 1700:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_Hole_in_My_Bucket#...
Some others mentioned amazonians and I can confirm this type of thing was incredibly common there (not just tranche, though I did hear that one more than once)
Used when someone is trying to over-anticipate potential problems down the road.
Most companies I've worked for had elaborate glossaries for their lingo. Usually dozens to hundreds of pages long.
If you do that, you failed the test. People who use inside jargony things love to explain them, and love to be asked what they mean. Also, they can usually tell when you don't pick up on it.
When I interview someone I'll throw in something company specific, that I know they won't understand, just to see if they'll ask me what I meant. I don't want to work with someone that is afraid to admit they don't know something.
I like that. Also, on the job, I try to be willing to ask for explanations even if I think I have a good guess. One thing you ending up finding is that other people often don't know either, but everyone was just going to be quiet about it.
On the other hand jargon is not an exact science. There are things like false friends, commonly incorrectly used terms and all that. That's why spoken language is usually spoken redundantly. Also sometimes the acoustic is bad and you don't want to ask 10 times a minute. Or the person says something incorrectly but you realize what the person actually means because of the surrounding context.
That being said, I find a lot of junior devs scared to ask and I've run into some senior devs who are a bit high and mighty and judge you if you don't know. It's why I started writing these articles (junior devs I mentor will ask me what things mean after hearing them in meetings/seeing them in PRs)
But...ideally one should just ask, like with anything else!
I guess i've hit my limit of free Meduim articles and i have to pay to see this now. I'm a little concerned, I wonder how many people don't realize all their content is now behind a paywall.
(just prefix any URL with https://outline.com/ – including the original https:// – to get a "reader mode" version of the page)
But, I go along with it, too. At least the new cliches replace the tired old Star Trek/Wars allusions. Let the new generation have their day.