What's the worst "corporate speak/buzzwords" that you absolutely hate?

Alright, team, let’s circle back and ensure we’re fully aligned on our north star objectives. We need to leverage synergy, engage in blue-sky thinking, and touch base on our pain points to drive mission-critical outcomes. But let’s not boil the ocean with unnecessary jargon - at the end of the day, we need to optimize our bandwidth for real, value-driven impact. If we keep moving the needle with this kind of thought leadership theater, we risk losing sight of our core competencies and drowning in a sea of meaningless buzzwords. Let’s pivot toward clear, actionable insights and sunset the overuse of strategic messaging before it becomes a blocker to true innovation. Instead of just playing the fast-follow game with every trending framework, let’s focus on original, high-impact execution that actually drives results.

~~Thoughts?~~ Chris, do you have any builds?

No?

Good. Then let's action this and drive it across the finish line!

Jesus fucking Christ. This was excellently written and horribly real.
- Other than the lack of a "shift left" it's just about perfect.
I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Thanks. It hit close to home. I hate it.
Lol

I heard "rightsizing" for the first time last year.

I have no idea what knucklehead PR dumbass came up with that but it made the following layoffs even more unpalatable.

The only time I hear rightsizing is for cloud resources. I've never heard of it in human resources. That sucks.

"Tribal knowledge."

image: We, clan. Together, strong.
reality: Ask Tommy if he remembers how to reset the printer

Though, I actually like this one. It's a pretty cool phrase you can use anywhere.

I call this one oral tradition, it always gets a chuckle
This is normally called "institutional knowledge" which is definitely a real thing, I don't think it's a marketing or HR buzzword. Though, a lot of the time it somewhat trivial things those things do add up. Institutional knowledge around things like how to deal with a finicky piece of specialized hardware, or what are the right words to convince your bosses boss to pay for you to go to a conference are pretty helpful. If you have an older "individual contributor" in your company that has been there for a while and hasn't climbed the ladder, they might be a gold mine for that kinda info (they could also just be an ass)
wow I was not expecting to find something worthwhile in here but I will definitely be using that lol

Bio break.

I don’t think I have to elaborate on that one.

This is a gamer term. I've never heard it in a business environment. Even as a IT engineer.
- Lucky you, it’s all over my company.
I like it because it's so vague.
A nap is pretty biological! And nobody will ask why your bio break was an hour long.
Thats not so much a corpo thing as a gamer thing IMO.
"AFK, Bio break" is much quicker to type.
- I never heard a gamer use "bio break" lol
- Quicker than “brb, bathroom”?
- I like “piss” and my char just stops moving
Yeah, hate this. To everyone saying it's not corporate: or certainly is. I did B2B work for around a hundred corps through the one I worked at and I heard it at probably 70% of them.
It's just the company trying to control literally every part of your life. Like who gives a shit what I do on my break? That, and you can't get an "extra" break later saying you have to pee.
fuck. i hate this one the most.
just say “break.” let everyone else decide for themselves if it needs to be biological in nature.
I work at a school and that one gets used sometimes. A lady that helps us develop programming said it quite often and my colleagues picked it up, I don’t use it myself.
I don’t use that, I usually just say I’m going to go grab some water but it’s better than saying “brb ima go take a wicked piss”. That being said, I’d respect the hell out of anyone who said that
- I always used "gotta go drain the lizard."

Alignment
Scalable
Circle back

If you use these regularly I KNOW the meeting you just booked me into should have been an email.

- I can't remember last time I heard someone use it in a normal conversation, but in the corporate world I find it gets incredibly overused.
I always hated “circle back” but I did get into using it ironically for a while.
- “let’s just put a pin in that, and circle back to it later”
- I wouldn't actually mind "circle back" if it wasn't just used as cover to kick the can down the road.
Every meeting should be a fucking email.
- I spend more time in meetings talking about the work I'm going to do, than doing the actual fucking work.
- Unless there is a need for faster communication or because it covers a topic that people have strong emotions about and need to see how others respond so they don't assume the other person's feelings about something. There are some cases where humans, being social animals, do need some interaction beyond words to accomplish coordinated tasks.
  The vast majority of meetings should be emails though. Just wish people actually read emails...
- I always want to do things by email instead of a meeting, but have to admit the meeting is often necessary. Of course it wouldn't be if people could actually read and comprehend a detailed email and if they could also actually communicate information into writing without expecting you to be their minds enough to make sense of the incomplete vague phases they hurriedly type.
Touch base too
- FUCK touching base that one's the worst.
Can we put a pin in that and circle back later? Maybe parking lot it and we can discuss it at the end of the call

Referring to people, staff as resources. Nice and dehumanizing.

An old line manager referred to me as a resource in front of me once. I should have told her to fuck off.
I've heard "human capital" before. The soulless fucks make others a commodity by stripping the mere mention of their existance of its humanity.

I had one retail manager who constantly kept using "moving forward" for everything. It was so freaking grating!

I hate that I've learned to censor myself around these soulless void-skulls by replacing "problem" with "challenge." No, I don't "solve problems", because to acknowledge something as a problem is negativity we just don't need here at Emperor Clothing Inc! I "tackle challenges"!

It's so freaking goofy and they just eat it up. Everything needs some sort of business-positive spin or they lose their minds and think you're not being a "team player."

I’ve got a manager that’s replaced problem with “opportunity to succeed”. Well, I’ve got 99 opportunities to succeed I guess.
- Well, I’ve got 99 opportunities to succeed...
  ...but management ain't one!
Seeing opportunities everywhere. The same underlying mechanism is at work here as with challenge: Let's replace the word for this bad thing with a different word that means something similar but positive. And then it looks like something good! I am very smart

quiet quitting

How dare you not overachieve for your corporate overlords!

Dance, monkey, dance!

Anything they use to replace the word "layoffs".

Rightsizing
- Fun sizing

"Department / Corporate Retreat"

As in, "we're holding our annual corporate retreat next Wednesday! It'll be offsite, you're all required to be there, and we'll be spending the day having a 6 hour meeting about absolutely nothing, just like we do every year. But dont worry, when we're done we'll play a game no one wants to play, or do a craft no one wants to do, but everyone will pretend they enjoy it because if they don't, they're not 'team players.'"

This year, our day-long-nothing-meeting was about how management is working to secure everyone's jobs despite budget cuts, and we have nothing to worry about. Then we took a personality quiz that said I was a character from Stranger Things. Then the next day, they told me I'm getting laid off and have 3 months left at the company.

Fucking RETREATS are so relaxing.

That they treat you like "family"

They do, the family just happens to be dysfunctional and abusive.

“We work hard and play hard” makes my skin crawl. Also, had a manager who would describe every situation with a war analogy. Sorry Bob, this is Finance, we’re not literally killing each other. Take it down a notch.

Everybody dance now!

There are many but I find "let's double-click on that" particularly grating

I always reply with, "Or we could right-click on that to see our options".
"I already three-finger-swiped down to minimize, sorry."

"Oh yeah? What's my name then?"

MVP - as in “minimum viable product”

More commonly known as the slop of a product or solution that’s being slinged to all the markets early on without adequate documentation, support, usability, scalability, standards or security.

“Corner the market” also deserves a disgusting mention.

Touch base

"We're family"

Unrelated but I only recently realised that when someone says they believe in family values it means they want to impose their definition of "family" on everyone else.
From an employer I guess when they refer to family they're really referring to a bond beyond work, which basically means they're expecting more from you than you're paid for?
#1 toxic workplace red flag
I fell for this once. Thought it sounded great. Everyone at that place hated each other, constantly spread rumors and sabotaged each other's work.

Here at Lemmy, we are steadfastly committed to leveraging our core competencies in order to drive strategic alignment across all functional units. Our focus remains unwavering on fostering a culture of continuous innovation and optimizing synergies that propel us towards achieving scalable growth and value creation for our stakeholders. By embracing agile methodologies and harnessing cutting-edge technologies, we endeavor to stay ahead of the curve, ensuring robust ROI while maintaining unparalleled customer-centricity in every facet of our operations.

Should you have any further inquiries or require additional insights into our visionary pursuits, please do not hesitate to connect with us. Together, let’s pioneer new paradigms and redefine excellence!

Congratulations, you win both this thread and my disgust. This is literally every company in software development these days.

I still hate "leverage" used as a synonym for "use." "We leverage technologies" yeah sure, when was the last time you had your asshole leveraged?

Next biz bro bestseller: "Leverage the power of your bowels to produce fertiliser that promotes growth"

For me its more of a lack of understanding of a specific word's definition. The word? "Systematically"

"There's a problem systematically, so IT is gonna have to look at that."

They literally mean there is a problem with a computer or software and not anything related to a systematic process.

This drives me right up the wall. Everyone in management says it like a buzzword.

Streamline

I mean, yeah, but actually streamlining things is something I like. I work on helicoptersn so example:
Aircraft is broken because of a faulty component. So the maintainer has to go and sign on to our grossly over-bloated computer (which can take anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes to start up), look up the relevant illustrated parts breakdown and download it (because they've moved everything to the cloud from our previous local servers) which runs through our exceptionally bottle-necked security system (seriously, usually ~50-100kbps download on a 100Mbps connection), find the part, log into a different system to get the national standard number and see what type it is to find what system to look in to see if we have it, look up the part location. Look up the maintenance procedure card (which is not classified) from the same place as the manual, download it at 100kbps, figure out the operational check for the replaced component is not in the card but in a separate maintenance manual, go back into that system and download that manual, find the ops check. Try to print out both the card and the ops check from whatever printer wants to work today. Fill out a requisition form, grab the part, and now you can start the job. Basically, add approximately an hour of work to any task for this nonsense.
Streamlined: Have a standalone computer that is not connected to the internet, is regularly updated via approved external hard drive with the latest Maintenance Procedure Cards and manuals, pre-filled requisition forms (with locations) for parts, lists of consumable components (like gaskets) for each repair, connected to a standalone printer hardwired to the standalone computer. Pull up card, manual, form, and ops check and print in 5 minutes.
Finding time wasters that only serve to frustrate workers and finding ways to cut those time wasters out makes the workers and the managers happy, assuming the people doing the job want to do the job well and quickly (we all want to be here, so that describes our hangar deck).
I'm a fan of streamlining.
- Like many buzzwords it's both a legitimate good idea and a concept a lot of people with no idea what's going on get a bug up their asses about and use to mean "shake stuff up that had been working fine on a hunch"

"Lean and nimble"

"Moving with a sense of purpose"

"We're like a family"

"Synergy"

“High energy multitasker”
“Detail oriented”
“Fast paced environment”
Translates to: “You will be simultaneously micromanaged and expected to know everything with no prior documentation, and you will be underpaid for your efforts. We also have no organization whatsoever :)))”
- "Fast paced environment" is the one that always gets me, because that's just explicitly admitting that their organization is a total clusterfuck but somehow this inevitably gets put in the bullet points list because some bozo apparently thinks this is a positive thing that will make people want to work wherever-it-is.
  All it means is that you'd better show up wearing roller skates because management is going to expect you to be in three places at once all the time.
We’re like family is a HUGE red flag for me. I had a boss use that as a selling feature to get me to work there. I had come from a place that really was like a family, a nice one, where we all really cared about each other. Turns out she meant it in the unpaid slave labour way. You can’t make a group of people a “family”, it has to grow that way Crystal. And not through pain and suffering!

I don't mind lunch and learns. I get overtime for that, AND they buy me lunch. I'm either stuck near the office for an unproductive hour I don't get paid for, or at my desk working on the same shit I was earlier for an extra hour.

But all the bullshit buzzwords attempting to paint employees standing up for themselves as bad things are obnoxious as hell: quiet quitting and the like

Yeah.... bring your own sack lunch and it's "voluntary", so no OT. That the lunch and learn I'm familiar with anyway.
- That's them half assing it, not a knock on the actual thing.

"double click" to mean "focus on" or "explore in more depth"

Typical double click request is as follows:
Manager: Leadership wants a "double click" on the numbers on slide 8.
Doer: What do they want to see.
M: Well they wanted to see more about the numbers on slide 8 they thought it was interesting.
D: What number? Interesting how?
M: They want a double click? Does that work? How long will that take?
D: ummm a week?
Sorry, I run KDE.
It always sounds so deliberate.
- It just sounds forced to me.
  It's never said by people who created this slang as kids growing up with computers, it's like managers who just invented it in their 40somethings.
  Like they're trying to be cool, but it's just not cool
This one comes from Excels Pivot tables, where you double click to see the source data, but it got picked up and bastardized
- Given the ubiquity of double clicking, I imagine it has many origins.

'contextual knowledge'

this gem was put forward in all seriousness when the data didn't support the claims in the report: "it's not in the numbers, but we have a pretty good sense that this is true"

"vibes"

Collaboration. I have never worked at a single company that wanted people talking or collaborating on the work floor, or even when sharing a cubicle, let alone listen to any suggestion us peons had to offer. They keep using it as an excuse for RTO.

"Opportunities" when talking about shitty metrics.

Any mention of "family" and I'm out. You aren't my fucking family. I barely tolerate any of you, and I only go that far because I am forced to participate in this bullshit just so I can feed and shelter myself. Just give me my project, shut your dick sheath, and let me grind my life away in silence.

On a totally unrelated note, "team player".

when they give thier non-apology apologies.

not really corporate, but (as far as i know) it was brought into existence due to corporations: "unalive"

Please socialise the requirement throughout your teams

"It doesn't scale", meaning the company might have to (shudder) hire people if our business doubles.

Ideate
Ask (noun)
Table (verb)

Does “tabling” mean putting a subject on the table or taking it off?

“That’s a big ask” drives me crazy. I’ve been hearing it everywhere lately. When did ‘ask’ become a noun?
- A huge ask. The biggliest ask. Sir Mixalot dreams about this ask.
- The earliest known use of the noun ask is in the Old English period (pre-1150).
  https://www.oed.com/dictionary/ask_n1
Tabling means to save for later. You put it in the table to deal with it another time.
- So tabling it means it’s off the table?
Does “tabling” mean putting a subject on the table or taking it off?
Depends on if you follow the British meaning or the US American one.

Let's take it offline

My thoughts exactly...Every time I walk by the door that says "server room."

“You don’t have a sense of urgency to get things done”. I usually get this when I’m going crazy to get things done so my status reports and presentations suffer. I understand paperwork is necessary, but can’t you at least say that rather than claiming I’m not getting things done. Meanwhile they’re satisfied with my sends of urgency to get things done if I just ignore my work and pamper them with status reports and PowerPoints.

IME, when they talk about sense of urgency, they want you to cut corners and rush through everything, but somehow make no mistakes. Usually said when you've been assigned double the normal workload for your position.

"pAiN pOiNtS"

these are not knots in muscles they are severe institutional shortcomings and failings that are draining us all, making us want to jump ship, hazardous, and in some cases even making the company lose profit but you fuckheads just want to write down pAiN pOiNtS and jerk yourselves and the shareholders off instead of actually doing ANYTHING MEANINGFUL

I can’t read this shit on the weekend you guys are killing me :p

People saying something needs to be flushed out when they really want it fleshed out.

Lmao!
I'd ask if they want me to get rid of it.
I also have a colleague who refers to Apple computers as MAC, and has at least once asked for MAC addresses of some devices when what she meant was IP addresses last associated with the devices.
I suppose it could be used in the sense of a dog flushing out game for the hunters - to make something hidden visible so it can be dealt with.

Growth.

This isn't strictly corpo-speak, but upper mgmt type people do this a lot:
Misuse of the word "myself." Like, "if you have any questions, talk to Joe or myself."
Nice one dumb-ass--you tried to sound smarter by adding syllables but it didn't work, did it!

I’ll take “myself” over using “I” as a direct object any day of the week.
- "I" as an object gets used way too often and way too many people argue that it's correct.

Effectuate

I'm going to effectuate this pole right up the ass of the next person to use that word.

👉👈
I can't think of a sentence in which it doesn't sound heavy handed.
Please effectuate the reports. Accounting will effectuate the invoice. HR has effectuated the hire.

Actionable. Ugh.

This one works in my company. If you have a ticket with no actionable items (you can't do anything to improve it or it is complete), then you use that lack of actionable items to make a timer to close it, or pressure the team you're waiting on.

One company I worked for decided it was a good idea to name a bunch of firings due to performance "Project Panda" 🤦

I mean that one is kinda funny. "Project Sloth" might have worked a bit better but been too on the nose.

Place I worked at some time ago made a big speech and unveiled the following company motto to a lot of confused faces: "Engagement makes awareness sustainable."

Nice. I'll drive alignment on this value with my directs. I'll status you tomorrow.

The Q3 numbers have a life of their own. Growing, shrinking, zig zagging all over the place. Pushing needles, pulling levers. And fyi, the roi is tbd. high five synergy!

This sounds like an Eric Andre sketch

Holistic
Double Click
Table Stakes
Jump Ball
Blocking & Tackling

AI

But specifically "How could we use AI?". If you dont know you don't need it. Also looking st you big tech.
- Let me introduce you to this AI TV remote. You push this button, and AI turns it on. Revolutionary!! Right??!

bandwidth
massage
ping

I used to have a coworker who would also say things like "I'll ping you after the meeting" and I'd chuckle because it sounded so stupid.
One day he asked me why I was smirking and I lied and told him "You know what 'pinging' means, right? It's the act of putting a metal rod in your urethra and tapping it with a tuning fork."
He NEVER said it again.
- I always think of the ping command line utility because I haven’t really used the word outside that context ever.
- He NEVER said [ping] again.
  Alright, I'll peg you instead!
What do you have against massages? I find them relaxing.
- I don’t remember what it was exactly but someone said something along the lines of “we’ll need to massage it a bit as we roll it out” regarding a new system being implemented.

Let's circle back.

"Good catch!"

Usually said when you bring up something that needs fixing, and said as a way to puff you up and not actually follow up on the problem.

Wow, lots of “double clicks”, which is fairly new to the usual list.

Because it's new and awful. Also implies that these massive new work is just a simple tasks. 0/10

Any talk of "we" from the boss really means "you". It's exceptionally maddening when the boss is already a POS who has an A+ for delegation but F- for teamwork and care factor.

Yesterday I aligned with Harold from the CD team on how to pull the data off their SI table, and so today I'm going to work on validating that data. I'll probably be done by tomorrow

Ping: emailing someone

Revert: emailing someone

[Topic] came up on diary: I'm emailing someone

Signs you work in a bullshit email job.

Strategy.

No, your half-baked, half-plan you stole from an intern, is not only not good, the last guy tried it and we are still trying to fix that mess.

I’m not sure if it really counts as a buzzword though.

I fucking hate “strategy” because upper management loves to use that word to describe EVERYTHING. Yeah, no shit there’s a strategy. If there weren’t, what the fuck are we all doing? Random bullshit until something sticks to the wall?

Lessons learned

"It is what it is".

Used by spineless weasels when it something that they could have avoided, or can still be solved but they are too scared or stupid to say anything.

“Cross-pollinate”

“Learnings” - you’re not fucking Borat!

I haaaaate this one! It's lessons ffs lessons.

Flywheel. Stop.

The term "let's slow time this" was used for a while. I can only assume that was some corporate phrase.

Mitigation

My current bugbear is "guesswork," although in my case this is in the context of the marketing bumf that my vendors and manufacturers slather their products in.

Apparently in the corporate world, the only purpose of guesswork is to "take it out of" things. Take the guesswork out of this, take the guesswork out of that. It seems at this point you are guaranteed that any time "guesswork" appears in a sentence it's going to be preceeded or followed by it being taken out of something, as surely as U always follows Q.

Once you notice the pattern (it doesn't take you long if you're sitting in my seat) the lack of originality becomes deeply irritating.

Ya why don't they just ask for a better plan, or say some part doesn't make sense to them. "Taking the guesswork out" to me means "I'm not convinced, go do more homework and explain this better"... Why can't people just say that.

I don't have a problem with the words - I have a problem with them getting appropriated and destroyed by corporates.

I had a manager who at the end of every meeting (and I mean EVERY meeting) said "go team!" It was especially annoying since he wasn't actually present in 99.9% of those meetings.

Sometimes I say this in a glib or sarcastic or ironic kind of way. It's not an "every meeting" kind of thing.
I'm not a manager but maybe a supervisor I guess.
I used to say Go Bills at the end of every meeting to my mostly local Western New York co-workers.
I'd respond with "venture" every time.