I have been working very hard to avoid doing this in the last few years, but it's hard when it's so pervasive among colleagues and other technical folks. There

I have been working very hard to avoid doing this in the last few years, but it's hard when it's so pervasive among colleagues and other technical folks. There was - I believe - a Tesla desert demo video with the engineers that came out late last year and I had to stop and count the number of sentences that started with "So," and I think it was 90%+ for a 15 minute video. It may not drive everyone else nuts the way it does for me, but it's filler that I feel implies a condescending tone or at minimum a way to gently increase the perceived validity of the point and expertise of the speaker.