Let’s have a lunch and learn!
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.
I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Thanks. It hit close to home. I hate it.
How do I delete someone else’s comment.
Thank you for reaching out. After a strategic review of available pathways, we regret to inform you that the requested course of action is not viable.
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.
“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.
This is normally called “institutional knowledge” which is definitely a real thing, I don’t think it’s a marketing or HR buzzword. Though, a lot of the time it somewhat trivial things those things do add up. Institutional knowledge around things like how to deal with a finicky piece of specialized hardware, or what are the right words to convince your bosses boss to pay for you to go to a conference are pretty helpful. If you have an older “individual contributor” in your company that has been there for a while and hasn’t climbed the ladder, they might be a gold mine for that kinda info (they could also just be an ass)
wow I was not expecting to find something worthwhile in here but I will definitely be using that lol
Bio break.
I don’t think I have to elaborate on that one.
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’ve never heard it in a business environment. Even as a IT engineer.
My friend manages a team of engineers and TAMs for massive companies that do stuff like make airplanes and manage phone networks and you know the names. They specifically produce a toolsuite and rent out pro-serv nerds to go to mammoth DCs and show people where they fucked up their cabling and double the throughput. Like, SO nerdy.
‘bio break’ is used a few times a day.
- Its unprofessional.
- Its gross. Saying something thats basically “gonna go take a dump” is unnecessary. Personally I don’t give two shits, but not everyone is as easygoing as me. Best to keep a professional hat on at work.
I did use it at work once and a single “Dude TMI” was all it took for me to stop. Online playing an MMO as a group is casual and often used as a trigger for a group break.
At work I just say “going to step away for a bit” and that’s all that’s needed.
Def all over the business world. It’s more polite than saying “okay, let’s have a 5 minute break from this meeting so everyone can piss and get some more coffee”
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.
I don’t use that, I usually just say I’m going to go grab some water but it’s better than saying “brb ima go take a wicked piss”. That being said, I’d respect the hell out of anyone who said that
Bio break.
My friend uses that all the time.
It means a pee break, a tea break, sometimes a ‘walk rover’ break. When meetings cross that 44-min mark, it’s break time.
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.
I heard teachers use that term. 🤷♂️
fuck. i hate this one the most.
just say “break.” let everyone else decide for themselves if it needs to be biological in nature.
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.
I’ve heard “human capital” before. The soulless fucks make others a commodity by stripping the mere mention of their existance of its humanity.
How dare you not overachieve for your corporate overlords!
Dance, monkey, dance!
Anything they use to replace the word “layoffs”.
That they treat you like “family”
“Department / Corporate Retreat”
As in, “we’re holding our annual corporate retreat next Wednesday! It’ll be offsite, you’re all required to be there, and we’ll be spending the day having a 6 hour meeting about absolutely nothing, just like we do every year. But dont worry, when we’re done we’ll play a game no one wants to play, or do a craft no one wants to do, but everyone will pretend they enjoy it because if they don’t, they’re not ‘team players.’”
This year, our day-long-nothing-meeting was about how management is working to secure everyone’s jobs despite budget cuts, and we have nothing to worry about. Then we took a personality quiz that said I was a character from Stranger Things. Then the next day, they told me I’m getting laid off and have 3 months left at the company.
Fucking RETREATS are so relaxing.
That’s what you get for being such a Will
Actually, I’m a Nancy!
A negative Nancy for sure /s
Briefcase wanker.
“No”
“We work hard and play hard” makes my skin crawl. Also, had a manager who would describe every situation with a war analogy. Sorry Bob, this is Finance, we’re not literally killing each other. Take it down a notch.
I work hard and I play hard. Not here to play.
Everybody dance now!
There are many but I find “let’s double-click on that” particularly grating
- 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.
Every meeting should be a fucking email.
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.
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.
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…
Can we put a pin in that and circle back later? Maybe parking lot it and we can discuss it at the end of the call
Touch base
MVP - as in “minimum viable product”
More commonly known as the slop of a product or solution that’s being slinged to all the markets early on without adequate documentation, support, usability, scalability, standards or security.
“Corner the market” also deserves a disgusting mention.
Can we “just double click on that” for a second?
shudders
I had a visceral reaction to this. If you’ve heard this in real life, my deepest sympathies.
What is it even supposed to mean?!
“Let’s explore that topic more”
What would a linux user say for this?
“Can we just dot slash that then chmod plus x that semicolon dot slash that for a second”I have to say, I have used the phrase “Drill Down” to refer to the same thing? Does it cause the same reaction?
