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Again, those only seem like that because you dont understand them: - Synergy: explained in my other post - Stakeholders: anyone who holds any power over a dec

Again, those only seem like that because you dont understand them: - Synergy: explained in my other post - Stakeholders: anyone who holds any power over a decision, even if it isn't formal power - Everyone on the same page: make sure that everyone has the right context and knows all the important facts to date - ROI: how much bang you're getting for the buck - Green Field: building from scratch, without using existing infrastructure (as building a factory on a Green Field), compare to brown field (using existing infrastructure) - Cross functional: when you're working with engineers and lawyers, aka, people who will absolutely never understand each other Sure, you could use long phrases to replace any of those, but what's the point? Don't be confused, ask what it is :)

mLuby 9y ago
Good explanations. However having to ask indicates these phrases communicate poorly. (This obfuscation, as the article states, is intentional.) Instead of "green field", for example, call the project "brand new" or "from scratch". There's no need to concoct additional synonyms in a language that already has so many. Further reading: - Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" - Musk's "Acronyms Seriously Suck"
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > However having to ask indicates these phrases communicate poorly. No, they actually speed up communication. Sure, to someone outside that area of work, it might seem like poor communication, but that's valid for any profession. > This obfuscation, as the article states, is intentional. Might be in some cases, but dismissing all of it as obfuscation is naive. > Instead of "green field", for example, call the project "brand new" or "from scratch". No, doesn't have the same meaning. Both "brand new" or "from scratch" might also refer to the design. Building a "brand new" datacenter "from scratch" doesn't have the same meaning as calling it "a green field project". Every profession has its own language. Just because you don't understand, doesn't mean it is obfuscation, or inefficient.
  - sailfast 9y ago
    I agree that this language can be useful in a specific domain, but you should not underestimate the barriers this creates to actual communication, confusion because you think it means one thing and your colleague thinks it means another, and/or alienating those outside the team that uses it and understands it. This goes for any language, business or otherwise. This is a real problem, especially for customer facing teams that continue to speak their own language instead of the client's language, and it will destroy your relationships if you do it wrong. The article is about this language being used to convey expertise when it does not exist (understanding of the language does not imply understanding of the subject you're supposed to know, but may make you sound smart in a meeting). Obviously feel free to keep using the terms if they work for you, but do so while also knowing the impact of the words. TL;DR: Words matter, sounds like you are of the same opinion :) As long as we use them purposefully and understand the trade-offs, all good.
fnordsensei 9y ago
Re: "Stakeholders", I don't think it has to mean someone who holds power over a decision, but rather someone who is affected by a decision and thereby has a vested interest in it. Though this is orthogonal to the power: they might have power as well.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  Someone who is affected but has zero influence over a decision isn't in the way I most commonly see it being used a stakeholder. If HR decides to lay you off, you're probably not a stakeholder. But I agree that YMMV, and I see how it could also be used in the way you suggest. The best example of Stakeholder is a director who a teammate presented a project to before taking it to the VP. The director said: - I don't agree with this project, but it isn't my decision. But I'm a trusted advisor of the VP. One of the best classes I ever had was called "Power and Politics in Organizations", and dealt with identifying, managing and using power in organizations. Power comes from many different sources (information, money, influence, friendship, knowledge, formal authority, etc.), and managing is one of the most important learnings when working in any organization with more than 2 people. Sadly, most engineers overlook those skills and focus only on "hard" skills, which I personally find to be far easier than "soft" skills (which are hard as hell to master, IMHO).
sailfast 9y ago
I've worked in consulting for most of my career and have a deep understanding of the meaning of these terms - but thanks for your definitions. The whole point is to make people feel silly for having to ask, even if you just made up the term. The whole point of the article was that business created / re-purposed a number of these things to mean something specific to _business_ rather than using regular words. The parent poster asked for some favorite examples of this, so I provided them. I am not saying that I think all these words are worthless in a corporate context, but if you trotted out some of this during a bar discussion you might get laughed at. All disciplines have their own languages, and to really know it you should speak it, but sometimes this is used to hilarious effect. "Hey - quick ask: can I link up with you tomorrow at 6 to talk fantasy baseball?" "Yeah, let me ping my stakeholders and make sure I can get a block for some real ideation, you know, deep work." "Alright. I'll take an action to get it on your calendar, and will capture learnings / best practices in a deck and send via email so we can circle back with the rest of the league." "Great, thanks."
- ucaetano 9y ago
  And since when is that exclusive to business? Pretty much every single profession does that. How many times have I heard other engineers using lingo to say bs? Countless. Every single profession has its own language, and they all use it to keep outsiders out. But apparently most people here in HN can't understand business lingo, so they just assume it is all bs. Just look at the example you gave. I don't know about you, but I've never seen anyone use business lingo like that. But I bet you could say the same bullshit using eng speak: "oh, hang on, I need to ping all the other peers, make sure they're up and running then run a distributed consensus algorithm to achieve sync and schedule the processes". Pure bullshit.

mLuby 9y ago

Good explanations. However having to ask indicates these phrases communicate poorly. (This obfuscation, as the article states, is intentional.) Instead of "green field", for example, call the project "brand new" or "from scratch". There's no need to concoct additional synonyms in a language that already has so many. Further reading: - Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" - Musk's "Acronyms Seriously Suck"

ucaetano 9y ago
> However having to ask indicates these phrases communicate poorly. No, they actually speed up communication. Sure, to someone outside that area of work, it might seem like poor communication, but that's valid for any profession. > This obfuscation, as the article states, is intentional. Might be in some cases, but dismissing all of it as obfuscation is naive. > Instead of "green field", for example, call the project "brand new" or "from scratch". No, doesn't have the same meaning. Both "brand new" or "from scratch" might also refer to the design. Building a "brand new" datacenter "from scratch" doesn't have the same meaning as calling it "a green field project". Every profession has its own language. Just because you don't understand, doesn't mean it is obfuscation, or inefficient.
- sailfast 9y ago
  I agree that this language can be useful in a specific domain, but you should not underestimate the barriers this creates to actual communication, confusion because you think it means one thing and your colleague thinks it means another, and/or alienating those outside the team that uses it and understands it. This goes for any language, business or otherwise. This is a real problem, especially for customer facing teams that continue to speak their own language instead of the client's language, and it will destroy your relationships if you do it wrong. The article is about this language being used to convey expertise when it does not exist (understanding of the language does not imply understanding of the subject you're supposed to know, but may make you sound smart in a meeting). Obviously feel free to keep using the terms if they work for you, but do so while also knowing the impact of the words. TL;DR: Words matter, sounds like you are of the same opinion :) As long as we use them purposefully and understand the trade-offs, all good.

fnordsensei 9y ago

Re: "Stakeholders", I don't think it has to mean someone who holds power over a decision, but rather someone who is affected by a decision and thereby has a vested interest in it. Though this is orthogonal to the power: they might have power as well.

ucaetano 9y ago
Someone who is affected but has zero influence over a decision isn't in the way I most commonly see it being used a stakeholder. If HR decides to lay you off, you're probably not a stakeholder. But I agree that YMMV, and I see how it could also be used in the way you suggest. The best example of Stakeholder is a director who a teammate presented a project to before taking it to the VP. The director said: - I don't agree with this project, but it isn't my decision. But I'm a trusted advisor of the VP. One of the best classes I ever had was called "Power and Politics in Organizations", and dealt with identifying, managing and using power in organizations. Power comes from many different sources (information, money, influence, friendship, knowledge, formal authority, etc.), and managing is one of the most important learnings when working in any organization with more than 2 people. Sadly, most engineers overlook those skills and focus only on "hard" skills, which I personally find to be far easier than "soft" skills (which are hard as hell to master, IMHO).

sailfast 9y ago

I've worked in consulting for most of my career and have a deep understanding of the meaning of these terms - but thanks for your definitions. The whole point is to make people feel silly for having to ask, even if you just made up the term. The whole point of the article was that business created / re-purposed a number of these things to mean something specific to _business_ rather than using regular words. The parent poster asked for some favorite examples of this, so I provided them. I am not saying that I think all these words are worthless in a corporate context, but if you trotted out some of this during a bar discussion you might get laughed at. All disciplines have their own languages, and to really know it you should speak it, but sometimes this is used to hilarious effect. "Hey - quick ask: can I link up with you tomorrow at 6 to talk fantasy baseball?" "Yeah, let me ping my stakeholders and make sure I can get a block for some real ideation, you know, deep work." "Alright. I'll take an action to get it on your calendar, and will capture learnings / best practices in a deck and send via email so we can circle back with the rest of the league." "Great, thanks."

ucaetano 9y ago
And since when is that exclusive to business? Pretty much every single profession does that. How many times have I heard other engineers using lingo to say bs? Countless. Every single profession has its own language, and they all use it to keep outsiders out. But apparently most people here in HN can't understand business lingo, so they just assume it is all bs. Just look at the example you gave. I don't know about you, but I've never seen anyone use business lingo like that. But I bet you could say the same bullshit using eng speak: "oh, hang on, I need to ping all the other peers, make sure they're up and running then run a distributed consensus algorithm to achieve sync and schedule the processes". Pure bullshit.