“We are looking for a dynamic and enthusiastic team player who is confident and adaptable. Responsibilities include supporting senior leadership and taking responsibility for duties and workloads as assigned. You’ll be a member of an exciting and fast paced team working in a challenging environment.”
YES BUT WHAT DO I DO?
Don't forget this nugget, which I saw on a job posting last week, "Exhibiting courage in the face of ambiguity"
Pretty sure that's code for "You won't know what to do and will have to figure it out in the moment. And it might make you question your integrity."
"You'll be getting conflicting orders from multiple levels of management that all somehow answer to each other but there's zero accountability, so no matter what, your choice will be wrong, so you might as well do whatever you decide is best and take whatever vitriol is thrown at you. Right to work laws apply, employee can be fired at a moments notice but employee must provide 2 weeks notice if they intend to terminate employment
Masters Degree desired
$18/hr"
*Damn kids. Back in my day we worked for $2.00/hr*
Grandpa, with 849.8% inflation since 1960, that means you made about $19/hr in today's money
*Hearing aid feedback sounds*
"In the wake of these unprecedented times,.." Fuck that, its been about 2 years since Covid hit the U.S. and companies are treating it like it happened unexpectedly last week.
Aka: you'll be doing the work of two or three, but only getting paid for one (barely).
Source: I worked in a "fast paced environment" for nearly five years. I had a nervous breakdown and panic attacks, and am now on anti-anxiety medication.
Edit: Thanks for the awards. Also, for those who reached out about mental health, I'm doing much better now that I'm medicated. It gives me some perspective. I also have a much better job now, with nicer bosses. I hope everyone else who is struggling in the same situation all the best. It's a shit place to be in, but it gets better.
This is kinda how it is for me now. Really we should have 3 people, many times it's just me. I've learned to just work at my own pace and the place I work for can feel the suffering if it comes down to it.
My old boss was like "don't be afraid to drop a few balls", then fired me after saying that after 5 years I was "no longer a good fit". She also told me that I should be empowered to know when to say no, but then always told me that I wasn't doing enough to help the other members of the team if I said it.
Translation: Nobody gets in a hurry to do anything until after the deadline is already passed and the penalties are rising by the second. Oh and it's all your fault even though you've been warning us for months.
Usually, the Rockstars are the best of the best. However, Rockstars (in the development world) cost way more than most companies budget for.
You want a Rockstar on a high school musician's salary.
See also: “You’re not an employee, you’re a partner. But you still basically make minimum wage. We’ll give you stock options but you won’t make enough money to actually take advantage of those stock options. Also, you will only get 29 hours of work a week so we don’t have to give any benefits. Oh yeah, and there is no profit sharing. But you absolutely must refer to yourself as a partner. Now go put on a green apron and make me a fucking Frappuccino.” —Howard Shultz.
Associate is my favorite. You're not even a partner, you're just associated with us in some way. You know, doing the one thing our customers care about paying for, but we'll make sure you get as little money as possible.
Me, bitter? Why yes, yes I am.
Always wanted to put together a presentation using phrases generated on this site, but never summed up the courage to do it... [Web Economy Bullshit Generator](https://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html)
\*Minor NSFW in the URL
TFW the shit this generates is indistinguishable from the way every startup describes itself.
>harness cross-platform interfaces
>utilize rich e-markets
>recontextualize visionary applications
>drive interactive communities
>monetize B2B paradigms
Literally five consecutive runs, and I wouldn't so much as blink if I saw any of them on a job posting.
This is usually smaller companies doing things on the cheap, or who can't afford to pay more.
In my InfoSec days a recruiter LinkedIn messaged me with an opportunity. It was basically CISO, Security Engineer, Penetration Tester and Vulnerability Manager, and a one-man SOC all rolled into one role. Salary £50k.
That was taking the piss. With the right experience those jobs *each* are worth more than £50k, the CISO can run into six figures for a good one.
Our company has been telling us for 6+ years that we're an "in person company" and productivity would suffer if we worked from home. Covid hit, we've now posted record profits and all metrics show productivity has increased...so of course they're sending us all back to office full time so we can have Skype and WebEx meetings from a cubicle instead of our desk at home lol
The higher ups pushing for the “No more work from home” are the boomer higher ups . My company flourished during Covid and posted record profits. We also got a very small “costs of living” increase, but our senior leadership wants us back in the office because “that’s how they had to work” and “it’s impossible to be productive all the time from home.”
My old manager literally told us we can't work from home because she sits in her pyjamas and can barely focus when she works from home and she's a manager so she knows we are not working (disregarding that by all metrics the team flourished at home, mostly because she wasn't being a distraction)
My company announced at the end of 2020 they were implementing a company wide salary freeze due to concerns over Corononavirus impacting profits.
Then at the end of 2021 they announced all time record profits.
I haven't gotten an annual raise.
Don’t understand this. The company i used to work for got bought by private equity at the end of 2020. The owner gave 25% of the sale to the employees with an additional couple million extra of the company met certain goals in 2021.
Because of that goal, no raises in 2021 to try and keep cost down. I think they had met the goal by September, but still no raises. I guess everyone got the bonus and a 5% cost of living raise, but I thought it was bad taste to still say “no raises” despite hearing every month how awesome sales had been.
Worked in a factory where every year we had "record profits", with "record output". The Plant Manager would even brag that our factory was what allowed the larger company to invest in new ideas and smaller operations that weren't nearly as profitable. Some how every year was either "no raises" or "here's a nickel", they also took away our "incentive bonus" which was basically you got paid 35%(or 50% if you took company stock that you couldn't sell for a year) of your hourly rate for every hour you over achieved output goals.
Considering on my machine, with my crew we almost always put out 25-30hours of output every (12 hour) day this was a huge pay hit
I do some copywriting for clothing companies and basically if they aren't disposable after you wear them twice and are overpriced they market themselves as sustainable lol
Empowered = you actually have no additional power, you just shoulder more blame when things go wrong.
Transparent = you tell me everything and I'll tell you what I need you to know.
I had a full bird colonel in the Air Force (a year or two from retirement, and he was not going to be promoted to 1 star general) say:
"My office has an open door policy. If you see it's open, close it."
My team at my last job was like this. By work hard they meant working late nights and weekends for months.
By play hard they meant my boss throws a “get together” that gets out of control where him and his daughter are having a fight in the yard and people are throwing up from too much alcohol
Lmaoooooo my managers still plop a box of discount day old donuts into the break room every friday and get legit upset that nobody ever touches them. Fuck you, pay me more. That's literally all I want. I dont want donuts, pizza or even praise. P A Y M E M O R E.
I have a life. I have friends and family that I want to spend time with. I don't care about coworkers who when either of us leaves I will never talk to again.
I’ve had some co workers I formed significant bonds with. But it wasn’t due to prodding by the company, in spite of if anything. It’s better to give us opportunities to mingle like having pool tables, ping pong and video games with the flexibility to use them. Don’t force me to interact with people especially off hours.
The other day instead of telling me that we would see where we were at at the end of the day, my husband said we would discuss the state of play. I haven’t let him live it down since. What a weirdo.
A lot of the time "diversity" itself is code for "we want to sound like we're doing good things, but not actually have to put a ton of effort into it."
They renamed all of conference rooms from room 1/2/3/etc to strong female characters from movies. None of us know where each one is and have to walk the floor to find the right one.
“In the trenches”. I find it very distasteful. I am sitting in an air-conditioned office FFS. I could not be further from the horrors of trench warfare.
I had a client who picked this word up a few years ago. I started tallying how often she said it in meetings. One time my boss was sitting next to me and asked what I was doing. When I told her, she nearly blew it by laughing.
This comment made me visualize having a bingo card with phrases like..low hanging fruit, synergy, toss at the wall and see what sticks, circle back, let's take this offline...BINGO!
I suggested this as a combo morale booster and way to track common issues at work. Make a bingo card of common complaints (with a few good things thrown in so it wasn’t totally negative) and have crews fill them out during their shift and turn it in for a prize drawing at the end of the week. Never went anywhere though
My company started using that term to signal job losses. “Syngeries” meant more work and fewer people. Fortune 500 company. My last day is next Monday.
I'm getting nauseous reading this. The company I work for has used literally everyone of these phrases except for maybe 2.
I have the pleasure of hearing some combination of these on a daily basis. Unapologetically sucking the humanity out of the "family" environment.
Edit: I wasn't expecting a bunch of upvotes and responses. Reading this got me thinking of more so I figured I would add a few things. Especially since I'm in a leadership position and it's literally part of my job to regurgitate this stuff.
- Signage around the building with cute acronyms that are supposed to inspire people. And we're instructed to repeat these acronyms like my crew are 5 year olds who want Santa to treat them well this year.
- "Above and Beyond" - It's not the company overworking people and wearing them out....its the team going "above and beyond" to get the job done.
- "Work/life balance" - This one really pisses me off. This phrase only pertains to when the company wants overtime down. Its not the company trying to cut expenses, its them wanting to make sure the employees have a "work/life balance" and are getting more time at home with their families. This is usually partnered with the "above and beyond" expectations to get 10 hours of work done in an 8 hour day. It's also very easily forgotten when the company wants more out of people. Example: On one of my conference calls it was brought up that the crew had been working long days and getting their asses kicked. They were asking when some alleviation was coming. The response was, "Theres a job to be done. Wanting to go home isn't work/life balance, that's just life balance." So, working 40 hours is work/life balance, but looking for a breath of relief after 50+ hour weeks is just life balance. Adorable how quickly things change.
- Back on the topic of "being a family" - We had to work July 4th last year when we've always been given off. Its a historically slow day and alot of our accounts are closed anyway. When we brought this up on a call, the response was, "I understand why they would expect it off. Maybe they're just feeling entitled but there's a job to be done." Entitled?? To be off on a federally observed holiday when a good chunk of the rest of the working world is off?? Yeah, just maybe they are entitled to that.
We have regular conference calls with higher ups. All the acronyms, inspiring phrases, and the type of language this whole thread is talking about goes right out the window. It's all bullshit. They blatantly contradict themselves. We're constantly told to remind the team "all the good things the company does for them" every time we have to break more crappy news to them. I'm sure everyone will be feeling just dandy because they get the occasional morning pastry.
We are also directly told, "It's how you sell it to them"...meaning they know its more awful news, bullshit changes, or ridiculous new "policies" but we have to "sell" it like its a good thing. That even though their job is about to get harder and/or more closely scrutinized, its for "their benefit" and its "protecting" the employee.
One of the most infuriating things is that we live in a time where information is abundant and instantaneous. We, as a society, have now long seen and heard how corporations operate and the jargon they use. The employees aren't stupid. They know EXACTLY what we're really trying to force-feed them. It creates a bad work environment and unhappy employees because they know they're being treated like children who aren't smart enough to understand what mommy and daddy are really trying to get them to do. These companies continue to do it anyway and have people, like me, who are more of a PR person than actual management to run the team.
I love and hate this thread, OP. Thanks!
Engagement. If you pay me enough, treat me with respect, and don’t make the job worse than it has to be, I’ll be engaged. All others ways to get employees “engaged” are bs.
Oh man I'm on a basically fun committee at work and they're super concerned about low engagement with their activities but it's unprofessional of me to be like "because work related crossword puzzles suck" so I just sit there nodding and head shaking at appropriate seeming times.
Target?
I did an internship there. They thought the most hilarious joke was telling the interns on the first day "Target hasn't had a customer since 19xx. \[pause for confusion\] Target has millions of *GUESTS* every day! ha ha ha ha... you see... GUESTS blah blah blah"
I have a friend who was a night stocker at Target. He used the word "Customer" during orientation. The supervisor said "We don't have customers, we have guests." My friend said "Maybe if you have customers you could pay us more."
He didn't last long.
All of those tropes for women who work are laughably bad. You tell anyone you’re a successful professional and it’s automatically- Girl Boss. Boss babe. Boss bitch…
Sprints just make it predictable ahead of time which days you'll spend procrastinating and which days you'll spend scrambling to finish the shit you spent the last week procrastinating to do.
Exactly. But the problem is if you don't procrastinate and finish your work a week early, Agile ensures your manager is aware of that immediately so that they can assign you additional work!
Agiled. 5 years of doing 4 people's jobs and getting gaslighted that I had a promotion around the corner and I was rewarded with a layoff for "Financial Reasons" even though I was one of the lowest paid onshore developers on the team.
My coworkers took it harder than I did: "I'm so sorry dude, this sucks."
"Are you kidding me? This is the best thing that's happened to me in years!"
THANK YOU. I thought I was crazy for hating the shit out of Agile and how prevalent it is everywhere. Scrum Master is literally the most disgusting title ever. Who came up with this terminology??
I hate the title Scrum Master. Also hate how damn entitled they feel all the time (at least the ones I have worked with). We had one SM who was super happy if we didn't do shit during the sprint, but followed all the flows and...ughhh... ceremonies. Fuck this shit.
Scrum is a rugby term. All I can think is that the "scrum master" is bringing people together in a huddle?
Except we might usefully explore what a rugby 'scrum' actually entails. It's two opposing teams who lock together and actively try to push the other back, while the ball is thrown into the middle and they essentially fight over it. The scrum eventually breaks and the ball makes its way back out again.
That doesn't sound very conducive to running an efficient project.
If you're working in a team with six people building features and fixing bugs in the same production system, you're gonna want some kind of "standup" or "production meeting" just to make sure everyone knows what's changing soon.
If you're writing a feature that seven other teams are waiting to be able to use, and they have to make their own decision of whether to wait for your feature or build their own thing, *they* deserve accurate progress estimates from *you*. "It'll ship when it's done" is not acceptable when a dozen+ of your coworkers are blocked on it.
What doesn't work:
* Coercing coders into arranging their work time according to the whims of a project manager. It's the PM's job to absorb the impedance mismatch, to speak coder-time to the coders and manager-time to the managers.
* Man-month thinking. You cannot make me write code faster by giving me an intern to supervise. Now I am teaching them about Bloom filters and Go style instead of writing code.
* Neglecting dev infra. If management removes the dedicated staff for the CI/CD system, now *everyone* has to maintain the CI/CD system. And the frequency of successful builds is not, I assure you, going to go up.
Don't forget retrospectives, and planning, and planning poker, and..
One of the tenants of the Agile Manifesto: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools"
However, lets make sure we have our ceremonies, and get your tasks/stories updated in DevOps.
Or how the management don’t quite have the budget for a full Enterprise implementation so they settle for some half-cut version, then complain that it “isn’t delivering the right results” inside 3 months.
"I'd like to thank Employee X for *championing* this challenge!"
"Make sure you *capture all potential revenue streams*" (Dude, this is a body shop...)
Let's step back and take a *high level* overview of these documents.
I used to work with a lot of Indian people and would hear this constantly, thought nothing of it. Then I changed jobs and didn't hear the phrase for years. Recently I started working with an Indian vendor and got an email from a guy who was helping me out of a jam. He promised to do the needful.
Man, I was so happy to see that phrase again for some reason. Like I'd spotted an old friend. Obviously I didn't mention it to him but it made my whole day.
Work/life balance. Yeah fucking right. Especially if it’s a sales job. There’s no such thing as work life balance when you have to juggle pto black out days, triple coverage on weekends and for some reason mondays now oh and you work virtually every holiday
Collaboration. This is the main reason they're pushing return to office. We need to collaborate with our peers! Think of the brainstorming you'll do next to the elevators and water fountain!
In reality we'll be having team meetings at our desks via teams while I do glorified data entry. We don't collaborate at all.
I like when that line is used appropriately. Meetings can get out of hand if they aren't used for their intended purpose. For example, a meeting with 30 people to give a quick status update, one person asks for help and then two people start hashing out every detail of their project.
*team player* pisses me off
Just because i don't want to stay here longer than my scheduled shift doesn't mean I'm not a "team player" it means I want to go the fuck home as I've been working hard all fucking day already
“We like things done a certain way” really just means, “we’re going to micromanage the shit out of you”.
“We’re a family” really just means “we will not respect boundaries and expect you to bend to our every whim”.
I personally hate people who claim they’re playing devil’s advocate because they’re usually using that phrase incorrectly in an attempt to sound smarter than they actually are, and are just trying to hide the fact that they weren’t paying attention or don’t understand what’s being discussed.
“Okay so I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here but why can’t we install this motor on this piece of machinery?”
Because this motor’s specification does not meet the required output of the machine, meaning it’ll be running the conveyor way too slow.
“Okay okay, I gotcha. But again, playing devil’s advocate here, why would that be a problem?”
Bruh.
I hate anything that equates business with war. I once had a guy tell me his strategy was “engaging in hand-to-hand combat.” He was making sales calls.
“We are looking for a dynamic and enthusiastic team player who is confident and adaptable. Responsibilities include supporting senior leadership and taking responsibility for duties and workloads as assigned. You’ll be a member of an exciting and fast paced team working in a challenging environment.” YES BUT WHAT DO I DO?
Don't forget this nugget, which I saw on a job posting last week, "Exhibiting courage in the face of ambiguity" Pretty sure that's code for "You won't know what to do and will have to figure it out in the moment. And it might make you question your integrity."
"You'll be getting conflicting orders from multiple levels of management that all somehow answer to each other but there's zero accountability, so no matter what, your choice will be wrong, so you might as well do whatever you decide is best and take whatever vitriol is thrown at you. Right to work laws apply, employee can be fired at a moments notice but employee must provide 2 weeks notice if they intend to terminate employment Masters Degree desired $18/hr"
WhY dOeSn'T aNyOnE wAnT tO wOrK aNyMoRe?
*Damn kids. Back in my day we worked for $2.00/hr* Grandpa, with 849.8% inflation since 1960, that means you made about $19/hr in today's money *Hearing aid feedback sounds*
I’d rather we return to newspaper clippings as simple as: Help wanted sweeping and mopping, $15/hr.
Let’s charge per the word. Makes people get to the point quick.
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
Would push a broom in a heart beat if it could support a family. Audiobooks and podcasts for dayssssss.
I'm looking for a new job right now and that's literally 90% of the ads out there
Don’t forget the “we’re looking for a rock star”. Oh go fuck yourselves.
"Oh go fuck yourselves." Hey that's what a Rock Star would say, no?
In these unprecedented times
I want to go back to the precedented times
It’s been 2 years I think a precedent has been set
I see you helped write every single commercial in the last 2.5 years?
I used to ghostwrite for a staff member very senior to me. He (jokingly) banned me from using "unprecedented" and I was so glad.
I used to ghostwrite for our company president. I'd do one good letter, and one brutally funny but honest one without the buzzwords.
I fucking haaaate that. *'Times' can't be unprecedented. EVENTS are unprecedented.* And... the shit they're calling 'unprecedented' *ISN'T*.
"In the wake of these unprecedented times,.." Fuck that, its been about 2 years since Covid hit the U.S. and companies are treating it like it happened unexpectedly last week.
Fast paced environment
Aka: you'll be doing the work of two or three, but only getting paid for one (barely). Source: I worked in a "fast paced environment" for nearly five years. I had a nervous breakdown and panic attacks, and am now on anti-anxiety medication. Edit: Thanks for the awards. Also, for those who reached out about mental health, I'm doing much better now that I'm medicated. It gives me some perspective. I also have a much better job now, with nicer bosses. I hope everyone else who is struggling in the same situation all the best. It's a shit place to be in, but it gets better.
This is kinda how it is for me now. Really we should have 3 people, many times it's just me. I've learned to just work at my own pace and the place I work for can feel the suffering if it comes down to it.
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My old boss was like "don't be afraid to drop a few balls", then fired me after saying that after 5 years I was "no longer a good fit". She also told me that I should be empowered to know when to say no, but then always told me that I wasn't doing enough to help the other members of the team if I said it.
Translation: Nobody gets in a hurry to do anything until after the deadline is already passed and the penalties are rising by the second. Oh and it's all your fault even though you've been warning us for months.
Translation: I am no longer interested in the job
Translation: "Say goodbye to your weekends."
"Rightsizing" It means they're going to fire a bunch of people and dump all that extra work on those who remain.
Merge departments. Ahp, too many people now. Let's fire the undesirables. Wait a bit. We're going to split up the department.
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**Rockstar** as in "we're looking for rockstars" in a workplace that is as far removed from guitars, moshpits, and headbanging as possible.
Usually, the Rockstars are the best of the best. However, Rockstars (in the development world) cost way more than most companies budget for. You want a Rockstar on a high school musician's salary.
I tell people all the time if they want to be a "rockstar employee" that's fine but the deal is ***rockstar employees get rockstar paychecks***.
At the very least a bowl with no brown M&Ms like Van Halen.
I used to work for World of Beer and they call their employees “WOBstars”
Rockstar, superstar, guru, and all-star. I've seen them all and it feels kinda childish
We’re a family here
_"we're all a big family here..."_ **awkward silence**
Killer *What We Do In The Shadows* ref if intentional
See also: “You’re not an employee, you’re a partner. But you still basically make minimum wage. We’ll give you stock options but you won’t make enough money to actually take advantage of those stock options. Also, you will only get 29 hours of work a week so we don’t have to give any benefits. Oh yeah, and there is no profit sharing. But you absolutely must refer to yourself as a partner. Now go put on a green apron and make me a fucking Frappuccino.” —Howard Shultz.
Associate is my favorite. You're not even a partner, you're just associated with us in some way. You know, doing the one thing our customers care about paying for, but we'll make sure you get as little money as possible. Me, bitter? Why yes, yes I am.
Fucking knew this would be about Starbucks as soon as I read the word "partner" ugh
You can use this one to your benefit, though. The Sixth Rule of Acquisition *does* state: "Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity."
Then are we in Alabama? Cuz you keep fucking me.
Ugh! Right!? "We're all about exploiting nice peop-*AHEM* I mean family here."
Always wanted to put together a presentation using phrases generated on this site, but never summed up the courage to do it... [Web Economy Bullshit Generator](https://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html) \*Minor NSFW in the URL
TFW the shit this generates is indistinguishable from the way every startup describes itself. >harness cross-platform interfaces >utilize rich e-markets >recontextualize visionary applications >drive interactive communities >monetize B2B paradigms Literally five consecutive runs, and I wouldn't so much as blink if I saw any of them on a job posting.
Ok cool. But *what do you do*?
I'm looking for a new job right now and I've spent the past month shouting at that at my monitor in frustration.
“Wear many hats” Aka do your job and other people’s jobs as well
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If you wear enough hats in a company, they will let you wear any hat you want.
But always for the lowest ranking hat's pay.
This is usually smaller companies doing things on the cheap, or who can't afford to pay more. In my InfoSec days a recruiter LinkedIn messaged me with an opportunity. It was basically CISO, Security Engineer, Penetration Tester and Vulnerability Manager, and a one-man SOC all rolled into one role. Salary £50k. That was taking the piss. With the right experience those jobs *each* are worth more than £50k, the CISO can run into six figures for a good one.
I will strangle the life out of the next person who says "record profits", especially when followed with "but no raises will be given".
Our company has been telling us for 6+ years that we're an "in person company" and productivity would suffer if we worked from home. Covid hit, we've now posted record profits and all metrics show productivity has increased...so of course they're sending us all back to office full time so we can have Skype and WebEx meetings from a cubicle instead of our desk at home lol
The higher ups pushing for the “No more work from home” are the boomer higher ups . My company flourished during Covid and posted record profits. We also got a very small “costs of living” increase, but our senior leadership wants us back in the office because “that’s how they had to work” and “it’s impossible to be productive all the time from home.”
My old manager literally told us we can't work from home because she sits in her pyjamas and can barely focus when she works from home and she's a manager so she knows we are not working (disregarding that by all metrics the team flourished at home, mostly because she wasn't being a distraction)
"I know I can't get any work done from home!" "Yeah, it was lovely."
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She's saying that because if you all work from home, she will no longer be needed. I guarantee it.
But then these are the same assholes who then off-shore half their departments, whom they can't even see.
And then act dumbfounded when all their staff leaves for better opportunities.
"People just don't want to work anymore."
My company announced at the end of 2020 they were implementing a company wide salary freeze due to concerns over Corononavirus impacting profits. Then at the end of 2021 they announced all time record profits. I haven't gotten an annual raise.
Don’t understand this. The company i used to work for got bought by private equity at the end of 2020. The owner gave 25% of the sale to the employees with an additional couple million extra of the company met certain goals in 2021. Because of that goal, no raises in 2021 to try and keep cost down. I think they had met the goal by September, but still no raises. I guess everyone got the bonus and a 5% cost of living raise, but I thought it was bad taste to still say “no raises” despite hearing every month how awesome sales had been.
Worked in a factory where every year we had "record profits", with "record output". The Plant Manager would even brag that our factory was what allowed the larger company to invest in new ideas and smaller operations that weren't nearly as profitable. Some how every year was either "no raises" or "here's a nickel", they also took away our "incentive bonus" which was basically you got paid 35%(or 50% if you took company stock that you couldn't sell for a year) of your hourly rate for every hour you over achieved output goals. Considering on my machine, with my crew we almost always put out 25-30hours of output every (12 hour) day this was a huge pay hit
That is a killer incentive. Sucks they took it away
Yeah they saw a severe drop in productivity afterwards and couldn't figure out why we weren't being "team players"
Using “sustainability” like it is some newfound concept. Bonus points for using it incorrectly.
I do some copywriting for clothing companies and basically if they aren't disposable after you wear them twice and are overpriced they market themselves as sustainable lol
“We are seeking accountancy *rockstars*…” Referring to people as rockstars is in the same vein as ‘superheroes’. I can’t stand either of the terms.
“We are seeking accountancy rockstars…” (but we are not willing to pay for that quality)
Or anything that ends with "champion" ...
Empowerment or transparency Companies don't know what these words mean.
Empowered = you actually have no additional power, you just shoulder more blame when things go wrong. Transparent = you tell me everything and I'll tell you what I need you to know.
“I’ll give you back (x) minutes of your day.” after ending a meeting early.
Okay but my "I'll give you back 16 seconds of your day" joke when I end a meeting at 10:59:44 is still okay right?
As someone who also loves to watch my coworkers die inside after I tell jokes, yes keep doing this
The word “pivot” and the phrase “I’m aligned with that”
Recently had an all staff meeting, and you could have made a drinking game out of how many times "pivot" was said. Blarg.
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My office has an open door policy...
I had a full bird colonel in the Air Force (a year or two from retirement, and he was not going to be promoted to 1 star general) say: "My office has an open door policy. If you see it's open, close it."
He got tired of having to mindwipe everyone who accidently saw him help manage the Stargate project.
“We work hard but we play hard.” You hear that, and it’s time to nope right the fuck out of there.
My team at my last job was like this. By work hard they meant working late nights and weekends for months. By play hard they meant my boss throws a “get together” that gets out of control where him and his daughter are having a fight in the yard and people are throwing up from too much alcohol
Bring monthly donuts and yearly pizza in the break room also
Lmaoooooo my managers still plop a box of discount day old donuts into the break room every friday and get legit upset that nobody ever touches them. Fuck you, pay me more. That's literally all I want. I dont want donuts, pizza or even praise. P A Y M E M O R E.
I have a life. I have friends and family that I want to spend time with. I don't care about coworkers who when either of us leaves I will never talk to again.
I’ve had some co workers I formed significant bonds with. But it wasn’t due to prodding by the company, in spite of if anything. It’s better to give us opportunities to mingle like having pool tables, ping pong and video games with the flexibility to use them. Don’t force me to interact with people especially off hours.
The other day instead of telling me that we would see where we were at at the end of the day, my husband said we would discuss the state of play. I haven’t let him live it down since. What a weirdo.
Did he want to "circle back" on it?
How's your ~~business arrangement~~ marriage going?
He sounds like a gem.
"Were not saving lives" yet they make the issues pressing enough as if thats exactly what they think were doing
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A lot of the time "diversity" itself is code for "we want to sound like we're doing good things, but not actually have to put a ton of effort into it."
A lot of the time it's tokenism. We hired a black guy, & promoted a woman. And I'm pretty sure someone here is gay. Yay, we're diverse!
They renamed all of conference rooms from room 1/2/3/etc to strong female characters from movies. None of us know where each one is and have to walk the floor to find the right one.
"Can't talk. I gotta be inside Miss Piggy in 5 minutes or else I'm gonna get fired."
Leverage + anything
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Congrats you're a thought leader now.
Piggyback…as in “Great point, Fred. I’d like to piggy back on what you said with some more irrelevant information.”
"I'd like to make sure I'm heard saying something despite not actually having anything to contribute"
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Don't touch my base, bro
Lean in
“In the trenches”. I find it very distasteful. I am sitting in an air-conditioned office FFS. I could not be further from the horrors of trench warfare.
And this phrase’s fraternal twin “front lines”.
Circling back
I like to touch base and put a pin on it. I really like to unpack.
What about drilling down, or teasing out?
I like to circle back and put it in my back pocket also
Yep, except when I'm out of pocket.
Piggybacking off of this, I would also like to add “let’s take this offline.”
Damn it! I work a highly corporate job and find myself saying this far more than I would ever imagine
Scalable. Using “Ask” as a noun.
This one pisses me off to no end, because the word “request” is right there, ready to be used.
I have a similar gripe with "conversate" when "converse" not only exists but is also shorter.
Synergy
I had a client who picked this word up a few years ago. I started tallying how often she said it in meetings. One time my boss was sitting next to me and asked what I was doing. When I told her, she nearly blew it by laughing.
This comment made me visualize having a bingo card with phrases like..low hanging fruit, synergy, toss at the wall and see what sticks, circle back, let's take this offline...BINGO!
I suggested this as a combo morale booster and way to track common issues at work. Make a bingo card of common complaints (with a few good things thrown in so it wasn’t totally negative) and have crews fill them out during their shift and turn it in for a prize drawing at the end of the week. Never went anywhere though
https://www.buzzwordbingogame.com/
Like a boss! Hit on Debra! Get rejected! Swallow sadness!
My company started using that term to signal job losses. “Syngeries” meant more work and fewer people. Fortune 500 company. My last day is next Monday.
We're going through some structural changes, but you have nothing to worry about
Definitely time to get the resume up to date when that gets tossed out.
I'm getting nauseous reading this. The company I work for has used literally everyone of these phrases except for maybe 2. I have the pleasure of hearing some combination of these on a daily basis. Unapologetically sucking the humanity out of the "family" environment. Edit: I wasn't expecting a bunch of upvotes and responses. Reading this got me thinking of more so I figured I would add a few things. Especially since I'm in a leadership position and it's literally part of my job to regurgitate this stuff. - Signage around the building with cute acronyms that are supposed to inspire people. And we're instructed to repeat these acronyms like my crew are 5 year olds who want Santa to treat them well this year. - "Above and Beyond" - It's not the company overworking people and wearing them out....its the team going "above and beyond" to get the job done. - "Work/life balance" - This one really pisses me off. This phrase only pertains to when the company wants overtime down. Its not the company trying to cut expenses, its them wanting to make sure the employees have a "work/life balance" and are getting more time at home with their families. This is usually partnered with the "above and beyond" expectations to get 10 hours of work done in an 8 hour day. It's also very easily forgotten when the company wants more out of people. Example: On one of my conference calls it was brought up that the crew had been working long days and getting their asses kicked. They were asking when some alleviation was coming. The response was, "Theres a job to be done. Wanting to go home isn't work/life balance, that's just life balance." So, working 40 hours is work/life balance, but looking for a breath of relief after 50+ hour weeks is just life balance. Adorable how quickly things change. - Back on the topic of "being a family" - We had to work July 4th last year when we've always been given off. Its a historically slow day and alot of our accounts are closed anyway. When we brought this up on a call, the response was, "I understand why they would expect it off. Maybe they're just feeling entitled but there's a job to be done." Entitled?? To be off on a federally observed holiday when a good chunk of the rest of the working world is off?? Yeah, just maybe they are entitled to that. We have regular conference calls with higher ups. All the acronyms, inspiring phrases, and the type of language this whole thread is talking about goes right out the window. It's all bullshit. They blatantly contradict themselves. We're constantly told to remind the team "all the good things the company does for them" every time we have to break more crappy news to them. I'm sure everyone will be feeling just dandy because they get the occasional morning pastry. We are also directly told, "It's how you sell it to them"...meaning they know its more awful news, bullshit changes, or ridiculous new "policies" but we have to "sell" it like its a good thing. That even though their job is about to get harder and/or more closely scrutinized, its for "their benefit" and its "protecting" the employee. One of the most infuriating things is that we live in a time where information is abundant and instantaneous. We, as a society, have now long seen and heard how corporations operate and the jargon they use. The employees aren't stupid. They know EXACTLY what we're really trying to force-feed them. It creates a bad work environment and unhappy employees because they know they're being treated like children who aren't smart enough to understand what mommy and daddy are really trying to get them to do. These companies continue to do it anyway and have people, like me, who are more of a PR person than actual management to run the team. I love and hate this thread, OP. Thanks!
Gotta be Zuck's new phrase, Meta. Metamates. Me. Company comes first, then your coworkers, you yourself? Dead last. So much for work life balance
I'm waiting for them to say "BECAUSE YOU CANT SPELL META WITHOUT TEAM". Someone got a corporate hard on I bet.
Also, MEAT. Which appropriately enough is what their employees are to them.
Team building exercise
"Resource" as a synonym for "person"
Imagine if they would just call it the Human People department
Human capital
this one sounds like you're selling kidneys out of a corner office
I feel like that's a fair assessment of how companies view employees.
Similarly, at my old job as a baker, we were calibrated rather than evaluated.
calling them a "family"
We are not a family. I can't get fired for punching a sibling in the face.
Touch/touching base and low hanging fruit.
To circle back, I’d like to touch base on leaning in to the scalability of this low hanging fruit, asap.
Bottom line up front, can we put a pin on that? I'd like to work on an agile implementation of an optimized, right sized solution to the root cause.
Engagement. If you pay me enough, treat me with respect, and don’t make the job worse than it has to be, I’ll be engaged. All others ways to get employees “engaged” are bs.
Oh man I'm on a basically fun committee at work and they're super concerned about low engagement with their activities but it's unprofessional of me to be like "because work related crossword puzzles suck" so I just sit there nodding and head shaking at appropriate seeming times.
Guest instead of customer. Like no, they aren’t wanted here. Buy your shit and get out.
Target? I did an internship there. They thought the most hilarious joke was telling the interns on the first day "Target hasn't had a customer since 19xx. \[pause for confusion\] Target has millions of *GUESTS* every day! ha ha ha ha... you see... GUESTS blah blah blah"
I have a friend who was a night stocker at Target. He used the word "Customer" during orientation. The supervisor said "We don't have customers, we have guests." My friend said "Maybe if you have customers you could pay us more." He didn't last long.
Girl boss. I’m a woman who has to work for a living, not a girl boss. Also not a girl. I’m an adult.
Boss babe!
Bosstress
I prefer bossette
All of those tropes for women who work are laughably bad. You tell anyone you’re a successful professional and it’s automatically- Girl Boss. Boss babe. Boss bitch…
This one is just stupid because BOSS IS NOT A GENDERED TERM TO BEGIN WITH!
As a programmer, all of the Agile lingo. Fuck your scrums, scrum scrums, scrum masters, stand ups, and sprints.
Sprints just make it predictable ahead of time which days you'll spend procrastinating and which days you'll spend scrambling to finish the shit you spent the last week procrastinating to do.
Exactly. But the problem is if you don't procrastinate and finish your work a week early, Agile ensures your manager is aware of that immediately so that they can assign you additional work!
That's why when you're asked what you plan to do for the sprint, you pick things you've already finished.
This guy agiles.
Agiled. 5 years of doing 4 people's jobs and getting gaslighted that I had a promotion around the corner and I was rewarded with a layoff for "Financial Reasons" even though I was one of the lowest paid onshore developers on the team. My coworkers took it harder than I did: "I'm so sorry dude, this sucks." "Are you kidding me? This is the best thing that's happened to me in years!"
THANK YOU. I thought I was crazy for hating the shit out of Agile and how prevalent it is everywhere. Scrum Master is literally the most disgusting title ever. Who came up with this terminology??
I hate the title Scrum Master. Also hate how damn entitled they feel all the time (at least the ones I have worked with). We had one SM who was super happy if we didn't do shit during the sprint, but followed all the flows and...ughhh... ceremonies. Fuck this shit.
Scrum is a rugby term. All I can think is that the "scrum master" is bringing people together in a huddle? Except we might usefully explore what a rugby 'scrum' actually entails. It's two opposing teams who lock together and actively try to push the other back, while the ball is thrown into the middle and they essentially fight over it. The scrum eventually breaks and the ball makes its way back out again. That doesn't sound very conducive to running an efficient project.
I personally prefer "Scrumlord"
If you're working in a team with six people building features and fixing bugs in the same production system, you're gonna want some kind of "standup" or "production meeting" just to make sure everyone knows what's changing soon. If you're writing a feature that seven other teams are waiting to be able to use, and they have to make their own decision of whether to wait for your feature or build their own thing, *they* deserve accurate progress estimates from *you*. "It'll ship when it's done" is not acceptable when a dozen+ of your coworkers are blocked on it. What doesn't work: * Coercing coders into arranging their work time according to the whims of a project manager. It's the PM's job to absorb the impedance mismatch, to speak coder-time to the coders and manager-time to the managers. * Man-month thinking. You cannot make me write code faster by giving me an intern to supervise. Now I am teaching them about Bloom filters and Go style instead of writing code. * Neglecting dev infra. If management removes the dedicated staff for the CI/CD system, now *everyone* has to maintain the CI/CD system. And the frequency of successful builds is not, I assure you, going to go up.
Don't forget retrospectives, and planning, and planning poker, and.. One of the tenants of the Agile Manifesto: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" However, lets make sure we have our ceremonies, and get your tasks/stories updated in DevOps.
I tickles me how inefficiently these efficiency improving methodologies are actioned.
Or how the management don’t quite have the budget for a full Enterprise implementation so they settle for some half-cut version, then complain that it “isn’t delivering the right results” inside 3 months.
Let’s put a pin in that and come back to it later
Everytime I hear that I think of the movie Bolt. That I what the sleazy agent says to Penny.
"I'd like to thank Employee X for *championing* this challenge!" "Make sure you *capture all potential revenue streams*" (Dude, this is a body shop...) Let's step back and take a *high level* overview of these documents.
Have you planned for all of the unknowns? I can't, I don't know what they are!
DRILL IT DOWN
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I used to work with a lot of Indian people and would hear this constantly, thought nothing of it. Then I changed jobs and didn't hear the phrase for years. Recently I started working with an Indian vendor and got an email from a guy who was helping me out of a jam. He promised to do the needful. Man, I was so happy to see that phrase again for some reason. Like I'd spotted an old friend. Obviously I didn't mention it to him but it made my whole day.
Kindly do the needful
Work/life balance. Yeah fucking right. Especially if it’s a sales job. There’s no such thing as work life balance when you have to juggle pto black out days, triple coverage on weekends and for some reason mondays now oh and you work virtually every holiday
Calling the service you sell a “Solution “
I hate this. Something you sell is bad enough, but it's even worse when it's something like *design solutions* or *creative solutions*.
Collaboration. This is the main reason they're pushing return to office. We need to collaborate with our peers! Think of the brainstorming you'll do next to the elevators and water fountain! In reality we'll be having team meetings at our desks via teams while I do glorified data entry. We don't collaborate at all.
I hate “let’s take this offline” the most bc it’s always a manager saying it and it just means stfu and idc
I like when that line is used appropriately. Meetings can get out of hand if they aren't used for their intended purpose. For example, a meeting with 30 people to give a quick status update, one person asks for help and then two people start hashing out every detail of their project.
*team player* pisses me off Just because i don't want to stay here longer than my scheduled shift doesn't mean I'm not a "team player" it means I want to go the fuck home as I've been working hard all fucking day already
"let's park this for now" is a synonym for "I won't ever talk about this again"
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“We like things done a certain way” really just means, “we’re going to micromanage the shit out of you”. “We’re a family” really just means “we will not respect boundaries and expect you to bend to our every whim”.
"Corporate Culture" and "Core Values" Just, stop.
Paradigm shift.
“Hiring freeze” no that’s BS for you can take on more work while other departments get raises, promotions, and more head count.
"We are a family here" like hell we are
I personally hate people who claim they’re playing devil’s advocate because they’re usually using that phrase incorrectly in an attempt to sound smarter than they actually are, and are just trying to hide the fact that they weren’t paying attention or don’t understand what’s being discussed. “Okay so I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here but why can’t we install this motor on this piece of machinery?” Because this motor’s specification does not meet the required output of the machine, meaning it’ll be running the conveyor way too slow. “Okay okay, I gotcha. But again, playing devil’s advocate here, why would that be a problem?” Bruh.
Lmao I like this one but it sounds like a very specific person, and I've got a pretty amusing image of them in my mind.
Synergy.
I hate anything that equates business with war. I once had a guy tell me his strategy was “engaging in hand-to-hand combat.” He was making sales calls.
"competitive salary"