YA THINK?
“Corporate bullshit is a specific style of communication that uses confusing, abstract buzzwords in a functionally misleading way,” said Littrell, a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Unlike technical jargon, which can sometimes make office communication a little easier, corporate bullshit confuses rather than clarifies. It may sound impressive, but it is semantically empty.”
I think it’s a complex problem. A lot of these “buzzwords” are actually quite semantically rich, if used correctly. “Synergy” refers to the principle of mutually advantageous reinforcement between factors, like the “three sisters” technique in agriculture. “Paradigm” is a concise word to denote an established, standard framework or perspective.
They are technical jargon, when used correctly. Used responsibly, they can convey a great deal of information with high semantic density. The problem arises when they’re transformed into buzzwords, layered in confusing or abstract ways.
Makes sense to me… bullshitters LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE lingo… the people that really know their stuff are able to ELI6 most complex issues
Hell, a business strategy shouldn’t even be that complex. Complexity in it should stem from depth and details, not fancy words or difficult concepts
I think a lot of this kind of bullshit is more of an HR strategy rather than actual business strategy, but most of those are probably just as vapid.
My nemesis at my previous job was a major bullshitter and everyone knew it, except some management. Woe be to those who actually listened to him - it never ended well for them. Other managers knew better, or at least were warned.
Nice guy, but a complete moron professionally.
I recall one time he was telling a group of us about a test he and management wanted to do. “No changes to the software,” he said, repeatedly. Looking around the room, I knew no one believed him (well, he believed it, I’m sure, but no one else), but we all knew it was pointless to point out that he would be proven wrong. And he was, of course. (He wasn’t a liar, just an idiot.)
This dude would do everything he could to make me look bad, sometimes in front of external groups, other times in front of management. I never complained, but others complained to his supervisor on my behalf, and he’d apologize, then do it again a few months later. Again, it wasn’t malice, he’s just an idiot and doesn’t think.
One time I got him. He asked if we had planned for a workload that was higher than some people expected, and I was able to say, “Actually we budgeted for even more than this.” A woman that worked for me, when she saw I was having a bad day, would ask, “Hey remember when you showed up Bob in that meeting in front of management?” It always improved my mood. Some coworkers are gold.
One time, he was set to become my supervisor, and I was like, yeah, I’m gone if that happens. Fortunately, it didn’t.
I had a guy like this at a previous job. Same story with everything. The guy was a self-proclaimed master of weird languages that no one ever used.
He actually managed to become my supervisor. I immediately went to the big boss and told him I would quit if it happened. The boss confirmed that he would become my supervisor and it was a final decision.
I quit. What’s weird is that I was the only macOS/iPhone developer at the time in a mostly Windows company. They struggled for a few months after I left, and they closed the company.
That guy is now a manager at a fast food. I pity the employees who work with him.
Golden.
Essentially, the employees most excited and inspired by “visionary” corporate jargon may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions for their companies.
“This creates a concerning cycle,” Littrell said. “Employees who are more likely to fall for corporate bullshit may help elevate the types of dysfunctional leaders who are more likely to use it, creating a sort of negative feedback loop. Rather than a ‘rising tide lifting all boats,’ a higher level of corporate BS in an organization acts more like a clogged toilet of inefficiency.”
The “clogged toilet of inefficiency” is my new favourite metaphor!
The results of this study will undoubtedly produce a sea change in corporate culture while simultaneously creating opportunities for cross functional collaboration resulting from this paradigm shift. /s
Now I’m going to piggyback off this and open the cupboards on a few more details. When we approach a shift of this magnitude it’s important to fail fast and fail often. Tightening those decision loops will really embrace a lean model needed to get the seismic action we’re after, think Wozniak, Gates, Musk here. Let’s put our best ideas into the meat grinder and make some fucking sausage!
Jesus H. I thought they probably skipped corporate shitspeak at those particular companies. That’s the cringiest mental pic of the night.
Ouch.
Mad respect for making me cringe so hard.
I was just going after names a dude bro management type would know. They’re so full of shit, lol. I like that they can’t tell when you’re mocking them though, they hear their language and accept it.
Let’s take this discussion offline.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
If an organization rewards empty bluster and ChatGPT-driven corporate drivel, then that it is because those things are the organization’s purpose.
Corporate lingo is a social filter for humanoid shitweasels to identify their peers and control eventual threats.
Nothing is more menacing to an incompetent manager than an underling speaking the truth. Thankfully corporate lingo allows underlings to be dismissed out of hand because either:- they didn’t use the correct lingo (“Steve fired the only guy who knew how that machine worked and ain’t nobody got time to figure it out because every other machine is falling apart as we speak” -> you get muted on teams and a meeting is booked with HR)
- they did use the the correct lingo which is - entirely by design! - devoid of negative turns of phrase (“our rightsizing efforts mean that other team members will have to step up and synergize” -> sounds fine, deal with it, next topic).
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I did the same. Worked as an IT Problem Manager for one of the worlds largest oil companies for 6 years. Got tired of the bullshit, now I work as a developer in a small company. Pay is way less, but man, an I happier now than 10 years ago!
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Someone will have to fix and maintain the tidal wave of slop being generated right now. Programming will remain an incredibly valuable skill and hiring will pick back up when this LLM mania ends.
I look forward to future full-slop/devslOps engineer job listings
Problem as evidenced by a lot of outsourcing success is that the people cutting the checks are not fazed by broken software.
This applies to a lot of industries where laypeople are at the mercy of ‘expertise’, a lot of folks doing things like HVAC or auto mechanics are actually not that good, and while they are the bane of the good HVAC and mechanics, they manage to secure market share just fine. Yes, there are mechanics that have crappier mechanics to thank for them having some stuff to fix, but the crappy mechanics can do easy stuff fine and lots of people driving with something busted because the mechanic couldn’t figure it out and told the customer “yeah, it actually is normal for it to be that way”.
I wanna do that. How did you go from.IT to developer. I did Linux IT and aero engineering. Some MATLAB and C back in the day. Is it hard to switch?
Honestly, I had no programming experience. I told my wife I’m tired and need a change. Signed up for 100Devs, an intensive course, especially watching it live in the middle of night twice a week while maintaining a full-time job, but if you ask me, it paid off in the end! But man, it was a fucking hard 9 months.
“We really have to circle our wagons and take some of this conversation offline so we can maximize the returns from our diversity”
Oh man, you missed an opportunity there… you could have put “Going forward” in front of it!
I’m sorry, but “synergizing” and “paradigm”, aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I’m accusing them of anything like that—
I’m fired, aren’t I?
The worst part about it is that if they were actually good at that, they would be extremely valuable. Getting different, unrelated groups who all function in different ways pointing in the same direction is like herding cats, and cat herders are highly sought after in most industries.
It’s just anyone who’s good at it would never call it ‘synergizing paradigms’.
Oh yes. The rest of you, get to work on thinking of a name. Like Poochie, but more proactive.
So…
Everyone ok with “Poochie”?
Paradigm by itself is useful in computer science. A lot of corpo speak comes from terms initially created for agile, but eventually scrum masters were not the engineers and the useful words that were used a describers are now used as content. Agile is a mistake.
So… Everybody okay with synergizing this paradigm then?
I’m fired, aren’t I?
Now now, we don’t use that kind of language here, this is a family company, because our bonds create greater amplification of the synergies between the aligned areas.
HRFamily Relations will have a constructive discussion about your behavior paradigm within the family
To analyse the impact of this study I recommend that we set up an interdepartmental committee with fairly broad terms of reference so that at the end of the day we’ll be in the position to think through the various implications and arrive at a decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived action which might well have unforeseen repercussions.
Your connection from premise to results is too tangible, vague it up a bit
We need to empower a multidisciplinary workgroup to establish a performative analysis of our process capabilities from a data driven perspective relative to this newly published benchmark.
This is what I’m talking about
As a member of the insulative layer of management between the floor and the corporate asshats I have to speak the language.
This translates to “Get the most no nonsense worker from every department up here, lets compare what they think we can do in a perfect world vs reality and have a look at what we can do to make the numbers look like what our bosses bosses boss wants to see, without cutting anyones hours or working any harder.”
If you need anyone to operationalize our assets for a best-in-brand technology assessment, feel free to drop me a bilateral session to set up preliminaries!
Translation: to make this work best, we need a meeting to plan it.
Too cautious, management wants movement on this, not deliberation. Setup a tiger team and give me an action plan asap.
Setup a tiger team
Meow!
Corporate bullshit is done by talkers, not by makers.
Corpospeak serves an important purpose though. It’s how they identify the correct people to fail upwards.
Jordan Peterson enters the chat
I never thought of it like that before but yeah, you’re right, he just spouts Manosphere Corpospeak!
Before he became mainstream, he was asked if he believes in god, and he started with “what do you mean by god?” and went on jibber jabber without actually answering yes or no. I didn’t take him seriously since. Two years later, I was surprised he became popular. But anyway, his meandering and sophistry without addressing the main premise has always been his MO, especially with the trademark question “what do you mean…”
he started with “what do you mean by god?”
Sounds about right lmao
I only know what synergy means from Balatro
lol, I learned it from Job Job. Who says games aren’t educational?
Former attorney Jack Thompson.
This is hilarious.
Corporate shitspeak: the traditional fallback for the utterly useless.
Duh, and/or hello.
