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I hate that these kinds of Orwellian phrases "Welcoming X to the Y Family" have now become idiomatic of corporate English. Ugh, no. There is no "family" involve
by igammarays 7y ago
I hate that these kinds of Orwellian phrases "Welcoming X to the Y Family" have now become idiomatic of corporate English. Ugh, no. There is no "family" involved here, not by any stretch of the word.
- javagram 7y agoTo be fair, if a “parent corporation” is a thing, then logically it has children and can be a corporate family.
- igammarays 7y agoIntent matters. The phrase "parent corporation" has no PR or emotional intent. "Welcoming X to Y family" has a clear emotive intent.
- andyfleming 7y agoMaybe the intent of the writer was to make the new hires feel welcome aboard to their new company. That's also not mutually exclusive of the emotive intent you are describing. What makes that Orwellian though?
- devmunchies 7y agoThe parent comment seems to be criticizing the higher-level corporate trend to use this lingo, and isn't talking about Friedman or Github specifically.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- devmunchies 7y agoGithub has a cartoon cat-octopus all over the site I would expect as a baby toy. Clearly linked to "emotional intent" "Github is so fun, guys!" I think they've outgrown that style (the black and white one in the header is ok)
- Dirlewanger 7y agoWelp, guess it's time to bust out the "I'm offended and we need to change this lingo" card because corporations aren't people and we should stop referring to them that way
- striking 7y agoI mean, in all seriousness, aren't they a little bit like people? https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-...
- rndgermandude 7y agoThey are slow AIs: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future
- mytailorisrich 7y agoIt actually took me a while to understand that the announcement likely meant that they had acquired Semmle...
- spjt 7y agoThey have to say that anyway, because Microsoft is acquiring Semmle, not GitHub. It is joining the GitHub "product family".
- igammarays 7y agoIf they had said "Welcoming Semmle to the Github Family of Products" instead, that would've been much more tolerable.
- smitop 7y agoWhen I read the headline I assumed it meant that GitHub was hiring an employee named Semmle, which confused me until I realized Semmle was a business.