10 ms·

I Don't Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore

332 points by azazo 15y ago

kls 15y ago
Valley Girl 2.0 Sadly this is me, I hate it, but I know it is true, my mind works far faster than my mouth and when I am excited it comes out as half sentences, joined by "likes" and "you knows". I have to concentrate to focus on pulling myself back and then I worry that I am not getting my thoughts across, but at least I know I am not getting them across when, I am doing it at thought speed. Someone said to me once "Dude you use likes like other people use ums". If there was one thing I could change about my speaking style that would be it. Funny part is I speak at conferences and when I monolog it is not an issue. Q&A is a different story all together.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  Record yourself. Playback. The course correction will happen quite quickly.
  - simon 15y ago
    Very quickly in my case. At the church that I pastor, it is still small enough that I am the principle sound engineer as well, so I get to hear my recorded sermons before uploading them. This cured the use of stop words and also is removing my rabid dislike of hearing myself speak.
- simonsarris 15y ago
  In my (private) high school's health class "like" and "um" and others were referred to as "stop-words" by the teacher because people would say them instead of pausing. It's really obvious once you look for them, for instance I hear things like college tour guides that would literally say "um" after every single sentence, probably unbeknownst to themselves! One of the class projects was for us to remove the stop words from our speech by the end of the semester. We did this by all using recording software (had to submit either by cassette tape or wav/mp3) and answering questions such as "Do you want to live forever and why or why not?" by speaking for at least 5 minutes. These were our homework assignments. We had to very consciously never use any stop words. We could pause the recorder if we had trouble thinking of what to say, but we could never say those words. I was skeptical of the assignment at first but my class all agreed by the end of the semester that it made us much better speakers, simply learning to consider our pauses instead of filling the silence with "like" and "um".
  - simon 15y ago
    Agreed. When preaching sermons (which are all recorded) I soon learned that a short pause was better than a stop word. And as long as you don't look or sound panicked when you pause, it comes across as being thoughtful and people accept it as a natural part of speaking to deep issues.
  - kls 15y ago
    I thank you guys for the advice, and I have done this and I have perfected (to the best of my abilities) my ability to monolog. Which is what these exercise teach you, my problem comes in natural conversation in which I am excited about the subject. The conversation is more dynamic in a dialog, and I find myself hopping from idea to idea faster than in a monolog in which I an the one who determines the switches in context.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    This rule never worked for me, because I, like some sort of analogy machine, like to use analogies. And like is a good word to place emphasis on before making an analogy.
    - sevenproxies 15y ago
      Except I imagine like the author like meant using like out of like, you-know, thingie... context. I live with someone who uses like far to often it's almost a speech impediment. Of course, he doesn't notice it and I'm learning to ignore it. However on the flip side, when I can't think of what I want to say next (and that is also often) I just go silent, frequently leaving my conversation partner puzzled and sometimes they ask to repeat what I said. edit: grammar.
      - kls 15y ago
        I would not say thingie but the rest of it is pretty much a conversation with me, about something I am extremely interested in. Speech impediment is a good description for it. It's has to be related to turrets or something, because it is ingrained and habitual, but yet in monologing (generally learned speech) I don't have the issue.
josscrowcroft 15y ago
Hahah, this is one of the truest articles I've read recently. I think everybody on here knows at least one person who speaks like the latter example in this piece, and the takeaway advice is immediately relevant and usable
- iamwil 15y ago
  Especially when it pertains to oneself.
revscat 15y ago
A part of me wonders if this isn't a factor of people trying to give more importance to the importance of their roles than is, in fact, justified. The doorknob example from the article is a good one in this respect. Instead of calling it a "doorknob", a complicated, important-sounding analog is used. Who's using it? Someone who feels that doorknobs are not that important, and that putting "doorknob salesman" on their resumé won't look nearly as impressive as "residential access tool marketer". Human nature, I suppose. Still, it makes the language less useful.
bbarthel 15y ago
I have the same problem. Once I realized that I was not just stupid and the other person was simply not communicating well, I began to try repeating what they just said back to them in "normal language" to ensure I had understood them correctly. When I did this, two things happened: people began to think that I was really smart, and I realized that I could usually repeat whatever I wanted and the person would agree with me.
- r00fus 15y ago
  > ...I realized that I could usually repeat whatever I wanted and the person would agree with me. This is actually a successful conversational terrorism [1] strategy, which I have used (when pressed) both in written and spoken contexts. [1] http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html ("Distorted Active Listening")
lucian1900 15y ago
You should listen to a Geordie for a few minutes. They literally use 'like' as punctuation.
albertsun 15y ago
I understand this critique, but I also think there are times where jargon, abstract expressions and acronyms make communication a lot faster and clearer for people who share the same context and domain knowledge. Trouble is, if you don't have the domain knowledge it's really hard to tell if what you're listening to is really condensed, specific info or meaningless blather. A lot of times I might say something like "we did data analysis with Python, NLTK and R. The stack is on EC2 running Django with memcached and varnish serving up json and the frontend uses jQuery, underscore and backbone to render it" To some people, that's a ton of info. To others it probably sounds like gibberish. The same even applies to the "valley-girl" talking. It sounds like meaningless half-sentences to someone listening in, but to people who know all the social relationships being discussed there might be a lot of information going back and forth.
- quanticle 15y ago
  Agreed. Unfortunately the businesspeople the author is talking about don't seem to be making the insider/outsider distinction that you're pointing out. Combine that with the fact that most businesspeople have the compulsive need to make their ideas sound more complicated and profound than they really are, and you have the recipe for misunderstanding and miscommunication.
  - tryitnow 15y ago
    That's precisely right. Unfortunately, this is caused by managers so often rewarding "confidence" instead of competence. Fortunately, the way out of this is through greater use of data and analysis. I always find it amusing when an overconfident manager s left speechless when you show them the numbers indicating what they just said is bs. Of course, the nice thing about using data is that it makes managerial blowhards think twice before making promises or telling people that they've actually done something great.
- blhack 15y ago
  >"we did data analysis with Python, NLTK and R. The stack is on EC2 running Django with memcached and varnish serving up json and the frontend uses jQuery, underscore and backbone to render it" This sentence has actual data in it. The author, I think, is talking about people whose statements have almost no substance, so they fill them in with buzzwords.
gallerytungsten 15y ago
Using real words that made sense would vastly decrease the grandiloquent feeling of self-importance that puffs up these enemies of clear communication. I sentence them all in absentia to ten readings of "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White.
- sharkbot 15y ago
  Ditto.
- garethsprice 15y ago
  The Economist has an excellent style guide (free online) for business communication. The magazine is geared towards a global, generalist audience so there's plenty of tips for communicating complex topics clearly. The Orwell essay mentioned above is excellent too. I'll often go back through something I've written and "make change" by splitting the $2 words into a handful of simpler ones. After all, no-one likes a sesquipedalianist.
jpdoctor 15y ago
I think the author missed one of the motivations behind some of the behaviors: Pure unadulterated bullshitting. Some folks figure out early in life to talk past their listeners, and some listeners will be intimidated. I found this out by simply playing stupid a number of times (it comes quite naturally for me) and making them explain it fully. You will be surprised at the number of charlatans exposed by this tactic.
- quanticle 15y ago
  Agreed. It's not being stupid that makes you vulnerable to bullshit. It's not wanting to look stupid. Lots of people will silently nod as if they understand when they have no idea what's being said. I've even done it myself in some circumstances. Unfortunately, this allows the speaker to gloss over critical issues make nice-sounding ideas unworkable in practice.
  - dmooney1 15y ago
    I sometimes fall into the trap of not asking questions in order to avoid looking stupid. However, when bullshit rises to a certain level and I've heard practically no substance, I don't ask questions mainly because I don't care. Once the bullshit bit is flipped, it is hard to unflip.
  - j_baker 15y ago
    I do that all the time, but not because I don't want to look stupid. Usually it's because they're talking about something I'm just not interested in, but I don't want to be rude about it.
  - doktrin 15y ago
    I'm certainly guilty of this. In my case, I suspect I process verbal information a touch slower than I should (which is to say probably above average, but below average when dealing with the fast-talking-fast-acting business crowd).
- kls 15y ago
  I knew a VC who you could describe as Barney Fife, and be 100% accurate. I always talked to him on a level he could understand, because I too thought he was a little slow. I was polite and explained things so that he understood how we where doing. Fortunate for me though, I never was on the opposite ends of his ambitions, because he fooled everyone who crossed his path. One day, we where in the process of negotiating an exit with a huge player in our market and I enter the room with him and our CEO (a brilliant guy), conversations start and this guy turns into Mr. Negotiator. I mean here is a guy that I have known for 2 years and all the sudden he is the smartest, shrewdest guy in the room. He is tearing apart arguments, quoting technical information that I explained to him (winking at me, saying that he was listening). Explaining financial models to them and why they wont work for us. etc. etc. I walked away from that table with a totally different perspective than I walked in with. The moral of the story was sometimes the bullshitter gets bullshited. They thought they had this guy, and when the time was right he, let go, blind sided them, took them off of their game, and walked out of the room holding the aces. I learned that day, that the dumbest guy in the room, may very well be the smartest guy in the room. Never underestimate people and their capabilities it may come back to haunt you. After that meeting I said to him, man I feel like I don't know you at all, in which he said something pretty profound, he said: I am the same friend you have had for two years, and that is a humble good listener. Those last 3 words have been what I have aspired to be since that day.
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
I've been on a conference call where everyone was banding around acronyms that I didn't know, so I jumped in and asked if they could define a particular TLA that was coming up frequently. It turned out that not a single person on the call knew what it stood for.
- jrockway 15y ago
  That happens all the time, but it's because the acronym is not the point. For example, when some production system went down, a "swat team" was assembled to make sure that wouldn't happen. SWAT stands for something, but what it stands for is meaningless, it's just a unique identifier for the sort of activities that the team will engage in. It's like when people call an ATM an "ATM machine". To them, ATM is an opaque word, not an abbreviation for "automated teller machine". And that's fine; use a word enough and it becomes a word.
  - RyanMcGreal 15y ago
    In fact, the discussion that followed my question demonstrated that everyone had different ideas of what the acronym meant, and that those differences underlay some of the conflict over what to do about issues related to it. It wasn't just a placeholder for a shared concept; it was an active barrier to cooperation.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    * Special Weapons and Tactics. I think it's important to still learn what any internal acronyms and jargon mean, otherwise you can get into a "telephone game" situation where two people have acquired different and conflicting definitions for the same term.
    - gravitronic 15y ago
      humorous anecdote: My brother's friend thought "lol" meant lots of love. Until one day an exchange went down: someone else: "I have to leave town, my mother is sick." them: "oh no! lol"
- 15y ago
celticninja 15y ago
Reminds me of this Finding Nemo quote: Marlin: It's like he's trying to speak to me, I know it. [to Squirt] Marlin: Look, you're really cute, but I can't understand what you're saying. Say the first thing again.
cnorgate 15y ago
Too true. Some guys over at college humor are on to this problem already... Anyone who has spent time in Silicon Valley will find this clip awesome! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4 Enjoy!
rokhayakebe 15y ago
Sadly enough that is the kind of talk that gets you hired as a manager in some places.
jrockway 15y ago
I don't have any trouble understanding people when they say something like "I'm in the sort of sustainability space around kind of bringing synergistic value-add to other people's work around this kind of space." They're simply saying nothing. I remember watching some cartoon where some aliens are watching humans converse and they interrupt by saying "ritual gum flapping time is over". That's all this is: ritual gum flapping. When two people flap their gums at each other for a few minutes, it increases their comfort with each other and that social comfort helps keep society glued together. Sometimes conversations are about exchanging ideas, other times they are purely about socialization. In this case, the conversations aren't about the ideas, they're about having a conversation. It may seem pointless, but a lot of being human is pointless.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  It is always ritual-gum-flapping time for some folks.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  Making a presentation to others (the context of TFA) is not about socialization, it is about exchanging ideas. If you aren't communicating well there, you are failing at the primary objective. I do agree there are contexts where the information transfer is not important (the ritual gum smacking). Good communicators can identify which is which and act appropriately.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Are you sure? I think business presentations are 99% getting your name out there and 1% teaching people valuable information. I've been to them and I'm not sure how anyone could pay attention to the content because it's very very slow-moving and boring. But now I know the presenter. Hence, it's obvious that this is a social ritual rather than something that makes objective good use of everyone's time. (The audience members attend so that other audience members will remember them too.) (We recently had some company-wide meeting that was a few hours long. I realized that I could have read an essay version of the "presentation" in five minutes. 1 hour and 55 minutes times 300,000 employees makes presentations a pretty fucking dumb way of sharing information, if the only purpose is in fact to share information.)
JonnieCache 15y ago
All I know is, anyone who uses the word "space" in any sense other than the mathematical one of "a set with dimensionality" needs a slap in the face. If they use it in a sentence where it could be substituted for "room" or "place" with no difference in meaning, then they get two slaps in the face. (Just realised this means I now have to slap people at my local hackerspace. So be it.)
srdev 15y ago
Kind-of tangentially related, but I find that there's a high tendency for people to interrupt other people and speak over others. This often leads to poorly-thought-out discussions, because people are rushing to get a word in edge-wise. At one point, I had to implement a "Lord of the Flies" style conch system to make discussions bearable. Lately, it seems endemic to programming style discussions. I'm not sure why. I find that when everyone slows down, thinks before speaking, and uses deliberate language, understanding improves greatly.
duncans 15y ago
Reminds me of this quote from Aditya Chakrabortty: > One of the best gauges of whether a statement actually means anything is to stick a not in its middle. If the opposite sounds ridiculous, then the chances are the original proposition is mush. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/19/economics-happiness-david-cameron http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/19/economic...
fedd 15y ago
I am extremely bad at this kind of talk. I like it when it's clear. But I am in a middle of preparing a presentation for some employer whom I want to offer some consultancy. What should I do not to give him an impression that hhe can move on without me because the topic is so clear and simple?
- yesbabyyes 15y ago
  Make it clear that you are the one making the topic clear and simple.
vijayr 15y ago
The word "like" - just casually pay attention to the number of times this word is used (abused?) in conversations, especially by teenagers - unbelievable. It is probably the new filler word, in place of "Umm", "Hmm" etc
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thewisedude 15y ago
In my experience, its over abstraction that is the real hard nut to crack. I have heard people using very abstract statements which everybody seems to agree on, but most of them understand it differently.
pak 15y ago
For anybody that needs a quick and humorous guide to all the terrible tropes of Business Guy Language, check out http://unsuck-it.com/browse/ http://unsuck-it.com/browse/ (warning, some bits may be NSFW). An indispensable dictionary for the common man.
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SoftwareMaven 15y ago
No discussion on this topic is complete without George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" essay[1]. It shiws this isn't a recent issue, and is systemic throughout the English world. Everybody who wants to communicate well should read this regularly. It is far easier to write abstractly than it is to write concretely, so people who aren't striving to be concrete will trend towards abstraction. [1] http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  I came here to post this myself. Language is an adaptive system: a term emerges with some small skerrick of insight, is rapidly applied to everything, is diluted and then loses its semantic potency. Then it happens again with a new term.
bradleybuda 15y ago
I'm in the advertising industry where I frequently find myself surrounded by this kind of jargon (the word "media" is a tell that you're about to get an avalanche of bullshit). I've found one trick for turning these conversations about abstract business models into something meaningful; ask "Who writes a check to whom, and for what?" If you get a quick answer, then you have a chance that there's common sense lurking around somewhere; if not, flee.
Splines 15y ago
Here's a real life example I ran into a week ago: http://dev.aol.com/aim http://dev.aol.com/aim We've made some changes to the Open AIM program to better align with AOL’s new direction and clear focus on our core strategy areas. Going forward, we're shifting our focus to select partnership opportunities that will help us move the needle in the communications space. NotSureIfSerious.jpg
- funkah 15y ago
  Wow, no way. Wow.
- nandemo 15y ago
  Well, it is annoying corporate-speak, but I can understand it: "this development program is now closed to the general public. It will be open only to partners that can help us making money."
MattGrommes 15y ago
I recently interviewed somebody who had previously been an elementary school teacher. Their resume had the following line: "Instructed a diverse group of up to 29 students in a self-contained classroom on a daily basis." I laughed at that bit of buzzword padding for quite a while.
1100110101 15y ago
Mr. Palotta, I would not worry too much. In most cases they're not saying anything. It's just hot air. Alas, the "abstractionitis" is not going away if we are talking about computers. Because "computers" are 100% symbols and therefore 100% abstraction. To cut through all the silly words and acronyms, just stick to the most basic of symbols, numbers. They are the only symbols you really need to understand computers. If someone gives you the abstraction: 101001010100101001001... And says, "Make something useful out of that", I'm afraid some further abstraction will be necessary. The question then becomes whether you use your own (choice of) further abstractions or blindly accept someone else's. That answer will affect how well you understand things. And also how much you can achieve.
dsimms 15y ago
It could be that the techie tendency to not be able to put them(our?)selves in others' shoes makes this kind of communication much more difficult.
snorkel 15y ago
I call it "biz dev jargon". The corporate hierarchy trains you to speak this way. The people at the top of the org chart have no clue what "we need a REST API for our Hadoop cluster " means or why they should even care, and if you do speak that way to them then they'll nod kindly at you then ask you to surrender your red stapler. You instead have to say "We're providing the customer with automated control over their own data processing." If you don't speak biz dev then the business owners don't understand you.
mrshoe 15y ago
As a great example, contrast a Mark Zuckerberg interview with a Steve Jobs one.
denzil_correa 15y ago
I believe the author wants to let us know that the phenomena of Proof by Intimidation is catching up with most of us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation
adamtmca 15y ago
I'm not saying these and other business phrases aren't widely misused or used as a way to sound smart while saying nothing. But in case anyone is interested: Synergy The term comes from M&A and refers to scenarios where the whole (after a merger or acquisition) is worth more than the sum of the parts. For example, a steel foundry which acquires a competitor and can now buy iron at a lower price because it buys in higher volume. The increase in profitability of both foundries from the decreased cost of iron is a "synergy". Value-add Comes from Michael Porter (I think) and refers to the idea that each of the activities a company performs on their inputs before the final output should add value to the final product. If the company is unable to add value through one of those activities it's something they should pass to another party. This leads to phrases like "is our customer service call centre a value-add or should we outsource it?"
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  My beef with things like this is not with the concept, but the way it is used. 'Does our call center add value to our product?' is an entirely reasonable question. 'Value-add' as a noun is a big red flag for me, suggesting the speaker has a poor grasp of the underlying concept and/or is trying to overstate the significance of the issue to seem more important. I feel the same when someone uses 'dialog' as a verb.
  - zabraxias 15y ago
    I've had this same argument when I hear project managers talk about what the "ask" is. I don't think "request" is a complicated word.
- billswift 15y ago
  Your definition is good enough, but "synergy" actually comes from Buckminster Fuller who built a philosophical system mostly around the idea in the 1950s through early 1970s. The business community got it from him, largely, from what I heard, by way of a bunch of leftish techies that were associated with him and Black Mountain College in the sixties.
  - 15y ago
johngalt 15y ago
Consider what your audience wants to know, not what you want to say. Try to avoid metaphor or analogy. "We recommend games based on what their friends play. Someday books and movies." = good "Our EC2 based cloud platform combines social dynamics for consuming a range of media types. Like facebook for apps." = bad
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absconditus 15y ago
This would not typically be appropriate for HN, but it is relevant: http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6507690/hardly-working-start-up-guys http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6507690/hardly-working-sta...
murrayb 15y ago
Death Sentence (http://www.amazon.com/Death-Sentences-Management-Speak-Strangling-Language/dp/1592401406 http://www.amazon.com/Death-Sentences-Management-Speak-Stran...) by Don Watson is the seminal work on the topic.
buff-a 15y ago
If the presentation is by a technical* person to other technical* people, and you are just sitting in, then its fine. You just don't understand. The techies do. Its just domain knowledge speeding communication. If the presentation is to non-technical people, then its probably jargon intended to bullshit you into thinking the speaker knows what they're talking about, and also a game brinksmanship to dare you to call their bluff. Call them on it. If they do know what they are talking about, you'll learn something (and probably so will everyone who was keeping quiet). If they don't, well, you learned something too. * substitute lawyer, doctor, {domain_professional}
jiggy2011 15y ago
This reminds me a bit of when I watch a Movie or a TV Show and there is some geek or hacker character who is supposed to be doing something related to computers in order to resolve a plot point. They will often say something like "oh I just.." then spiel of a load of technical phrases some of which I recognize and others which are clearly made up, this is supposed to sound highly complicated and clever but not understandable to the average viewer. Of course if you know anything at all about technology you realize it sounds completely ridiculous. I always wonder why they do this, since it is something viewers are not supposed to be able to understand anyway. Why not at least make it accurate enough to at least give the geeks watching a chuckle (references to nmap in the matrix for example and apache/perl in "the social network" being examples of this) rather than just roll their eyes.
lucian1900 15y ago
You should listen to a Geordie for a few minutes. They literally use 'like' as punctuation.

332 points by azazo 15y ago

kls 15y ago

Valley Girl 2.0 Sadly this is me, I hate it, but I know it is true, my mind works far faster than my mouth and when I am excited it comes out as half sentences, joined by "likes" and "you knows". I have to concentrate to focus on pulling myself back and then I worry that I am not getting my thoughts across, but at least I know I am not getting them across when, I am doing it at thought speed. Someone said to me once "Dude you use likes like other people use ums". If there was one thing I could change about my speaking style that would be it. Funny part is I speak at conferences and when I monolog it is not an issue. Q&A is a different story all together.

jpdoctor 15y ago
Record yourself. Playback. The course correction will happen quite quickly.
- simon 15y ago
  Very quickly in my case. At the church that I pastor, it is still small enough that I am the principle sound engineer as well, so I get to hear my recorded sermons before uploading them. This cured the use of stop words and also is removing my rabid dislike of hearing myself speak.
simonsarris 15y ago
In my (private) high school's health class "like" and "um" and others were referred to as "stop-words" by the teacher because people would say them instead of pausing. It's really obvious once you look for them, for instance I hear things like college tour guides that would literally say "um" after every single sentence, probably unbeknownst to themselves! One of the class projects was for us to remove the stop words from our speech by the end of the semester. We did this by all using recording software (had to submit either by cassette tape or wav/mp3) and answering questions such as "Do you want to live forever and why or why not?" by speaking for at least 5 minutes. These were our homework assignments. We had to very consciously never use any stop words. We could pause the recorder if we had trouble thinking of what to say, but we could never say those words. I was skeptical of the assignment at first but my class all agreed by the end of the semester that it made us much better speakers, simply learning to consider our pauses instead of filling the silence with "like" and "um".
- simon 15y ago
  Agreed. When preaching sermons (which are all recorded) I soon learned that a short pause was better than a stop word. And as long as you don't look or sound panicked when you pause, it comes across as being thoughtful and people accept it as a natural part of speaking to deep issues.
- kls 15y ago
  I thank you guys for the advice, and I have done this and I have perfected (to the best of my abilities) my ability to monolog. Which is what these exercise teach you, my problem comes in natural conversation in which I am excited about the subject. The conversation is more dynamic in a dialog, and I find myself hopping from idea to idea faster than in a monolog in which I an the one who determines the switches in context.
- jrockway 15y ago
  This rule never worked for me, because I, like some sort of analogy machine, like to use analogies. And like is a good word to place emphasis on before making an analogy.
  - sevenproxies 15y ago
    Except I imagine like the author like meant using like out of like, you-know, thingie... context. I live with someone who uses like far to often it's almost a speech impediment. Of course, he doesn't notice it and I'm learning to ignore it. However on the flip side, when I can't think of what I want to say next (and that is also often) I just go silent, frequently leaving my conversation partner puzzled and sometimes they ask to repeat what I said. edit: grammar.
    - kls 15y ago
      I would not say thingie but the rest of it is pretty much a conversation with me, about something I am extremely interested in. Speech impediment is a good description for it. It's has to be related to turrets or something, because it is ingrained and habitual, but yet in monologing (generally learned speech) I don't have the issue.

josscrowcroft 15y ago

Hahah, this is one of the truest articles I've read recently. I think everybody on here knows at least one person who speaks like the latter example in this piece, and the takeaway advice is immediately relevant and usable

iamwil 15y ago
Especially when it pertains to oneself.

revscat 15y ago

A part of me wonders if this isn't a factor of people trying to give more importance to the importance of their roles than is, in fact, justified. The doorknob example from the article is a good one in this respect. Instead of calling it a "doorknob", a complicated, important-sounding analog is used. Who's using it? Someone who feels that doorknobs are not that important, and that putting "doorknob salesman" on their resumé won't look nearly as impressive as "residential access tool marketer". Human nature, I suppose. Still, it makes the language less useful.

bbarthel 15y ago

I have the same problem. Once I realized that I was not just stupid and the other person was simply not communicating well, I began to try repeating what they just said back to them in "normal language" to ensure I had understood them correctly. When I did this, two things happened: people began to think that I was really smart, and I realized that I could usually repeat whatever I wanted and the person would agree with me.

r00fus 15y ago
> ...I realized that I could usually repeat whatever I wanted and the person would agree with me. This is actually a successful conversational terrorism [1] strategy, which I have used (when pressed) both in written and spoken contexts. [1] http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html ("Distorted Active Listening")

lucian1900 15y ago

You should listen to a Geordie for a few minutes. They literally use 'like' as punctuation.

albertsun 15y ago

I understand this critique, but I also think there are times where jargon, abstract expressions and acronyms make communication a lot faster and clearer for people who share the same context and domain knowledge. Trouble is, if you don't have the domain knowledge it's really hard to tell if what you're listening to is really condensed, specific info or meaningless blather. A lot of times I might say something like "we did data analysis with Python, NLTK and R. The stack is on EC2 running Django with memcached and varnish serving up json and the frontend uses jQuery, underscore and backbone to render it" To some people, that's a ton of info. To others it probably sounds like gibberish. The same even applies to the "valley-girl" talking. It sounds like meaningless half-sentences to someone listening in, but to people who know all the social relationships being discussed there might be a lot of information going back and forth.

quanticle 15y ago
Agreed. Unfortunately the businesspeople the author is talking about don't seem to be making the insider/outsider distinction that you're pointing out. Combine that with the fact that most businesspeople have the compulsive need to make their ideas sound more complicated and profound than they really are, and you have the recipe for misunderstanding and miscommunication.
- tryitnow 15y ago
  That's precisely right. Unfortunately, this is caused by managers so often rewarding "confidence" instead of competence. Fortunately, the way out of this is through greater use of data and analysis. I always find it amusing when an overconfident manager s left speechless when you show them the numbers indicating what they just said is bs. Of course, the nice thing about using data is that it makes managerial blowhards think twice before making promises or telling people that they've actually done something great.
blhack 15y ago
>"we did data analysis with Python, NLTK and R. The stack is on EC2 running Django with memcached and varnish serving up json and the frontend uses jQuery, underscore and backbone to render it" This sentence has actual data in it. The author, I think, is talking about people whose statements have almost no substance, so they fill them in with buzzwords.

gallerytungsten 15y ago

Using real words that made sense would vastly decrease the grandiloquent feeling of self-importance that puffs up these enemies of clear communication. I sentence them all in absentia to ten readings of "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White.

sharkbot 15y ago
Ditto.
garethsprice 15y ago
The Economist has an excellent style guide (free online) for business communication. The magazine is geared towards a global, generalist audience so there's plenty of tips for communicating complex topics clearly. The Orwell essay mentioned above is excellent too. I'll often go back through something I've written and "make change" by splitting the $2 words into a handful of simpler ones. After all, no-one likes a sesquipedalianist.

jpdoctor 15y ago

I think the author missed one of the motivations behind some of the behaviors: Pure unadulterated bullshitting. Some folks figure out early in life to talk past their listeners, and some listeners will be intimidated. I found this out by simply playing stupid a number of times (it comes quite naturally for me) and making them explain it fully. You will be surprised at the number of charlatans exposed by this tactic.

quanticle 15y ago
Agreed. It's not being stupid that makes you vulnerable to bullshit. It's not wanting to look stupid. Lots of people will silently nod as if they understand when they have no idea what's being said. I've even done it myself in some circumstances. Unfortunately, this allows the speaker to gloss over critical issues make nice-sounding ideas unworkable in practice.
- dmooney1 15y ago
  I sometimes fall into the trap of not asking questions in order to avoid looking stupid. However, when bullshit rises to a certain level and I've heard practically no substance, I don't ask questions mainly because I don't care. Once the bullshit bit is flipped, it is hard to unflip.
- j_baker 15y ago
  I do that all the time, but not because I don't want to look stupid. Usually it's because they're talking about something I'm just not interested in, but I don't want to be rude about it.
- doktrin 15y ago
  I'm certainly guilty of this. In my case, I suspect I process verbal information a touch slower than I should (which is to say probably above average, but below average when dealing with the fast-talking-fast-acting business crowd).
kls 15y ago
I knew a VC who you could describe as Barney Fife, and be 100% accurate. I always talked to him on a level he could understand, because I too thought he was a little slow. I was polite and explained things so that he understood how we where doing. Fortunate for me though, I never was on the opposite ends of his ambitions, because he fooled everyone who crossed his path. One day, we where in the process of negotiating an exit with a huge player in our market and I enter the room with him and our CEO (a brilliant guy), conversations start and this guy turns into Mr. Negotiator. I mean here is a guy that I have known for 2 years and all the sudden he is the smartest, shrewdest guy in the room. He is tearing apart arguments, quoting technical information that I explained to him (winking at me, saying that he was listening). Explaining financial models to them and why they wont work for us. etc. etc. I walked away from that table with a totally different perspective than I walked in with. The moral of the story was sometimes the bullshitter gets bullshited. They thought they had this guy, and when the time was right he, let go, blind sided them, took them off of their game, and walked out of the room holding the aces. I learned that day, that the dumbest guy in the room, may very well be the smartest guy in the room. Never underestimate people and their capabilities it may come back to haunt you. After that meeting I said to him, man I feel like I don't know you at all, in which he said something pretty profound, he said: I am the same friend you have had for two years, and that is a humble good listener. Those last 3 words have been what I have aspired to be since that day.

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

I've been on a conference call where everyone was banding around acronyms that I didn't know, so I jumped in and asked if they could define a particular TLA that was coming up frequently. It turned out that not a single person on the call knew what it stood for.

jrockway 15y ago
That happens all the time, but it's because the acronym is not the point. For example, when some production system went down, a "swat team" was assembled to make sure that wouldn't happen. SWAT stands for something, but what it stands for is meaningless, it's just a unique identifier for the sort of activities that the team will engage in. It's like when people call an ATM an "ATM machine". To them, ATM is an opaque word, not an abbreviation for "automated teller machine". And that's fine; use a word enough and it becomes a word.
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago
  In fact, the discussion that followed my question demonstrated that everyone had different ideas of what the acronym meant, and that those differences underlay some of the conflict over what to do about issues related to it. It wasn't just a placeholder for a shared concept; it was an active barrier to cooperation.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  * Special Weapons and Tactics. I think it's important to still learn what any internal acronyms and jargon mean, otherwise you can get into a "telephone game" situation where two people have acquired different and conflicting definitions for the same term.
  - gravitronic 15y ago
    humorous anecdote: My brother's friend thought "lol" meant lots of love. Until one day an exchange went down: someone else: "I have to leave town, my mother is sick." them: "oh no! lol"
15y ago

celticninja 15y ago

Reminds me of this Finding Nemo quote: Marlin: It's like he's trying to speak to me, I know it. [to Squirt] Marlin: Look, you're really cute, but I can't understand what you're saying. Say the first thing again.

cnorgate 15y ago

Too true. Some guys over at college humor are on to this problem already... Anyone who has spent time in Silicon Valley will find this clip awesome! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4 Enjoy!

rokhayakebe 15y ago

Sadly enough that is the kind of talk that gets you hired as a manager in some places.

jrockway 15y ago

I don't have any trouble understanding people when they say something like "I'm in the sort of sustainability space around kind of bringing synergistic value-add to other people's work around this kind of space." They're simply saying nothing. I remember watching some cartoon where some aliens are watching humans converse and they interrupt by saying "ritual gum flapping time is over". That's all this is: ritual gum flapping. When two people flap their gums at each other for a few minutes, it increases their comfort with each other and that social comfort helps keep society glued together. Sometimes conversations are about exchanging ideas, other times they are purely about socialization. In this case, the conversations aren't about the ideas, they're about having a conversation. It may seem pointless, but a lot of being human is pointless.

jpdoctor 15y ago
It is always ritual-gum-flapping time for some folks.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
Making a presentation to others (the context of TFA) is not about socialization, it is about exchanging ideas. If you aren't communicating well there, you are failing at the primary objective. I do agree there are contexts where the information transfer is not important (the ritual gum smacking). Good communicators can identify which is which and act appropriately.
- jrockway 15y ago
  Are you sure? I think business presentations are 99% getting your name out there and 1% teaching people valuable information. I've been to them and I'm not sure how anyone could pay attention to the content because it's very very slow-moving and boring. But now I know the presenter. Hence, it's obvious that this is a social ritual rather than something that makes objective good use of everyone's time. (The audience members attend so that other audience members will remember them too.) (We recently had some company-wide meeting that was a few hours long. I realized that I could have read an essay version of the "presentation" in five minutes. 1 hour and 55 minutes times 300,000 employees makes presentations a pretty fucking dumb way of sharing information, if the only purpose is in fact to share information.)

JonnieCache 15y ago

All I know is, anyone who uses the word "space" in any sense other than the mathematical one of "a set with dimensionality" needs a slap in the face. If they use it in a sentence where it could be substituted for "room" or "place" with no difference in meaning, then they get two slaps in the face. (Just realised this means I now have to slap people at my local hackerspace. So be it.)

srdev 15y ago

Kind-of tangentially related, but I find that there's a high tendency for people to interrupt other people and speak over others. This often leads to poorly-thought-out discussions, because people are rushing to get a word in edge-wise. At one point, I had to implement a "Lord of the Flies" style conch system to make discussions bearable. Lately, it seems endemic to programming style discussions. I'm not sure why. I find that when everyone slows down, thinks before speaking, and uses deliberate language, understanding improves greatly.

duncans 15y ago

Reminds me of this quote from Aditya Chakrabortty: > One of the best gauges of whether a statement actually means anything is to stick a not in its middle. If the opposite sounds ridiculous, then the chances are the original proposition is mush. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/19/economics-happiness-david-cameron http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/19/economic...

fedd 15y ago

I am extremely bad at this kind of talk. I like it when it's clear. But I am in a middle of preparing a presentation for some employer whom I want to offer some consultancy. What should I do not to give him an impression that hhe can move on without me because the topic is so clear and simple?

yesbabyyes 15y ago
Make it clear that you are the one making the topic clear and simple.

vijayr 15y ago

The word "like" - just casually pay attention to the number of times this word is used (abused?) in conversations, especially by teenagers - unbelievable. It is probably the new filler word, in place of "Umm", "Hmm" etc

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thewisedude 15y ago

In my experience, its over abstraction that is the real hard nut to crack. I have heard people using very abstract statements which everybody seems to agree on, but most of them understand it differently.

pak 15y ago

For anybody that needs a quick and humorous guide to all the terrible tropes of Business Guy Language, check out http://unsuck-it.com/browse/ http://unsuck-it.com/browse/ (warning, some bits may be NSFW). An indispensable dictionary for the common man.

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SoftwareMaven 15y ago

No discussion on this topic is complete without George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" essay[1]. It shiws this isn't a recent issue, and is systemic throughout the English world. Everybody who wants to communicate well should read this regularly. It is far easier to write abstractly than it is to write concretely, so people who aren't striving to be concrete will trend towards abstraction. [1] http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

jacques_chester 15y ago
I came here to post this myself. Language is an adaptive system: a term emerges with some small skerrick of insight, is rapidly applied to everything, is diluted and then loses its semantic potency. Then it happens again with a new term.

bradleybuda 15y ago

I'm in the advertising industry where I frequently find myself surrounded by this kind of jargon (the word "media" is a tell that you're about to get an avalanche of bullshit). I've found one trick for turning these conversations about abstract business models into something meaningful; ask "Who writes a check to whom, and for what?" If you get a quick answer, then you have a chance that there's common sense lurking around somewhere; if not, flee.

Splines 15y ago

Here's a real life example I ran into a week ago: http://dev.aol.com/aim http://dev.aol.com/aim We've made some changes to the Open AIM program to better align with AOL’s new direction and clear focus on our core strategy areas. Going forward, we're shifting our focus to select partnership opportunities that will help us move the needle in the communications space. NotSureIfSerious.jpg

funkah 15y ago
Wow, no way. Wow.
nandemo 15y ago
Well, it is annoying corporate-speak, but I can understand it: "this development program is now closed to the general public. It will be open only to partners that can help us making money."

MattGrommes 15y ago

I recently interviewed somebody who had previously been an elementary school teacher. Their resume had the following line: "Instructed a diverse group of up to 29 students in a self-contained classroom on a daily basis." I laughed at that bit of buzzword padding for quite a while.

1100110101 15y ago

Mr. Palotta, I would not worry too much. In most cases they're not saying anything. It's just hot air. Alas, the "abstractionitis" is not going away if we are talking about computers. Because "computers" are 100% symbols and therefore 100% abstraction. To cut through all the silly words and acronyms, just stick to the most basic of symbols, numbers. They are the only symbols you really need to understand computers. If someone gives you the abstraction: 101001010100101001001... And says, "Make something useful out of that", I'm afraid some further abstraction will be necessary. The question then becomes whether you use your own (choice of) further abstractions or blindly accept someone else's. That answer will affect how well you understand things. And also how much you can achieve.

dsimms 15y ago

It could be that the techie tendency to not be able to put them(our?)selves in others' shoes makes this kind of communication much more difficult.

snorkel 15y ago

I call it "biz dev jargon". The corporate hierarchy trains you to speak this way. The people at the top of the org chart have no clue what "we need a REST API for our Hadoop cluster " means or why they should even care, and if you do speak that way to them then they'll nod kindly at you then ask you to surrender your red stapler. You instead have to say "We're providing the customer with automated control over their own data processing." If you don't speak biz dev then the business owners don't understand you.

mrshoe 15y ago

As a great example, contrast a Mark Zuckerberg interview with a Steve Jobs one.

denzil_correa 15y ago

I believe the author wants to let us know that the phenomena of Proof by Intimidation is catching up with most of us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation

adamtmca 15y ago

I'm not saying these and other business phrases aren't widely misused or used as a way to sound smart while saying nothing. But in case anyone is interested: Synergy The term comes from M&A and refers to scenarios where the whole (after a merger or acquisition) is worth more than the sum of the parts. For example, a steel foundry which acquires a competitor and can now buy iron at a lower price because it buys in higher volume. The increase in profitability of both foundries from the decreased cost of iron is a "synergy". Value-add Comes from Michael Porter (I think) and refers to the idea that each of the activities a company performs on their inputs before the final output should add value to the final product. If the company is unable to add value through one of those activities it's something they should pass to another party. This leads to phrases like "is our customer service call centre a value-add or should we outsource it?"

anigbrowl 15y ago
My beef with things like this is not with the concept, but the way it is used. 'Does our call center add value to our product?' is an entirely reasonable question. 'Value-add' as a noun is a big red flag for me, suggesting the speaker has a poor grasp of the underlying concept and/or is trying to overstate the significance of the issue to seem more important. I feel the same when someone uses 'dialog' as a verb.
- zabraxias 15y ago
  I've had this same argument when I hear project managers talk about what the "ask" is. I don't think "request" is a complicated word.
billswift 15y ago
Your definition is good enough, but "synergy" actually comes from Buckminster Fuller who built a philosophical system mostly around the idea in the 1950s through early 1970s. The business community got it from him, largely, from what I heard, by way of a bunch of leftish techies that were associated with him and Black Mountain College in the sixties.
- 15y ago

johngalt 15y ago

Consider what your audience wants to know, not what you want to say. Try to avoid metaphor or analogy. "We recommend games based on what their friends play. Someday books and movies." = good "Our EC2 based cloud platform combines social dynamics for consuming a range of media types. Like facebook for apps." = bad

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absconditus 15y ago

This would not typically be appropriate for HN, but it is relevant: http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6507690/hardly-working-start-up-guys http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6507690/hardly-working-sta...

murrayb 15y ago

Death Sentence (http://www.amazon.com/Death-Sentences-Management-Speak-Strangling-Language/dp/1592401406 http://www.amazon.com/Death-Sentences-Management-Speak-Stran...) by Don Watson is the seminal work on the topic.

buff-a 15y ago

If the presentation is by a technical* person to other technical* people, and you are just sitting in, then its fine. You just don't understand. The techies do. Its just domain knowledge speeding communication. If the presentation is to non-technical people, then its probably jargon intended to bullshit you into thinking the speaker knows what they're talking about, and also a game brinksmanship to dare you to call their bluff. Call them on it. If they do know what they are talking about, you'll learn something (and probably so will everyone who was keeping quiet). If they don't, well, you learned something too. * substitute lawyer, doctor, {domain_professional}

jiggy2011 15y ago

This reminds me a bit of when I watch a Movie or a TV Show and there is some geek or hacker character who is supposed to be doing something related to computers in order to resolve a plot point. They will often say something like "oh I just.." then spiel of a load of technical phrases some of which I recognize and others which are clearly made up, this is supposed to sound highly complicated and clever but not understandable to the average viewer. Of course if you know anything at all about technology you realize it sounds completely ridiculous. I always wonder why they do this, since it is something viewers are not supposed to be able to understand anyway. Why not at least make it accurate enough to at least give the geeks watching a chuckle (references to nmap in the matrix for example and apache/perl in "the social network" being examples of this) rather than just roll their eyes.

lucian1900 15y ago

You should listen to a Geordie for a few minutes. They literally use 'like' as punctuation.