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Comment by scifibestfi | Hacker News Reader

> approximately 260 talented Plaids

"Plaids"

This joins the list of Googlers, Xooglers, Nooglers, Amazonians, Tweeps, Krakenites, what else?

Any word except "employee", because that makes people think too much about contracts and worker-boss relationships. We're all cool people with a cool name here! Nobody is merely an "employee"!

It's not just in the software industry, by the way. Most companies in the US call their employees by anything other than "employee". I assume it's a subtle union-busting doublethink tactic.

I may have some wrong but

* Starbucks employees are "partners".

* Target employees are "team members"

* Disney park employees are "cast members"

* Burger King employees are "team members"

Is there some HR from hell manual somewhere that encourages this? Does anybody sincerely enjoy being called some cringey pun?

I'm pretty sure it's a subtle union-busting doublethink. When the Starbucks employees started unionising, they said things like "if you're going to call us partners [the Starbucks name for 'employee'], then start treating us like partners."

It's to make you think of it more like a family than what it is, a contractual means to an end for both parties.

I imagine when Google was actually a cool, fun underdog that was upending industry, a lot more employees took pride in being part of the team doing that.

Now you're basically working for a branch of world government. Most likely doing meaningless gruntwork to reinvent the wheel for the umpteenth time, or actively doing evil.

I worked at a place called Blend and they used “Blendkind.” My first question in onboarding was if anyone had thought of “Blender”

Probably did it to avoid association with the 3D software.

Now that just sounds like a cult

“Metamates” (I kid you not)

That sounds like workplace harassment.

before the name change it was FBuddies ;)

hahaha

Coinbae's at Coinbase.

If used sarcastically this can be great. If anyone uses it genuinely in a serious setting I would feel abused.

Not Coinbros?

I love how internally everyone refers to everyone as “resources” - the most dehumanizing.

"Peeps" at MailChimp.

And miss the opportunity to call them Chumps?

They probably forced "Peeps" as fast as they could because if the employees started referring to themselves as "Chimps" they could have all sorts of trouble.

Rackers at Rackspace

As a former Racker, I was always fine with that - it more or less makes sense, although I never racked a server in my time there. What was funny was that we had an organic tendency to apply the same naming scheme to employees of other companies. After Rackspace acquired Datapipe, they had to tell us to stop calling them Datapipers.

Was partial to Oktanaut if only because my kids love Octonauts.

"You're one of us until you aren't."

Uberers ?

Uberetto/a was used internally by travis kalanick for a long time

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