
Ask HN: What buzzwords or expressions do you dislike the most? - siruncledrew
I always hear people say “I’ll talk to you offline” during meetings, but logically it never made sense to me.
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farseer
"Machine Learning" and "AI": when used by people clueless of basic logic or
stats

"Synergy": Management uses this word a lot, often to appear not clueless (or
helpless) of how business processes work

"Techie": Too broad a term to describe anyone. From a rich kid with lots of
gadgets to a world renowned authority on a subject.

"20 years of experience between us" or "Combined 20 years of experience in xx
Technology": When 10 kids are running a startup after working two years part
time during college.

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IlyaStam
"optics". when used instead of "perception". As in "Blah Blah created bad
optics for our department".

"head count" when used by mid-level managers, who want to look cool, instead
of word "position" or "open position". Annoys me when I hear: "We have 3 open
head-counts" \- we are not cattle, we are people.

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mothsonasloth
CI/CD - most companies say they do it, but in reality they don't

Cloud - hate this world even after all these years

Senior Developer - a rank that can be anything from 3 years to 10 years
experience

This is one of my favourite clips from Silicon Valley TV show, it is very
relevant to this topic.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps)

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matt_the_bass
I know I’ll probably get a lot of flack for this but: “start up”.

No, just because I have a small tech business does not mean I have a start up.
We actually make things that people buy, develop cool (in my opinion)
technology, have interesting unique customers AND are commercially profitable.

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hatsubai
"Disruptive" \- It's a term that used to describe an annoying school child,
but now all of the startup junkies use it to push their grandiose ideas that
they claim will upend major industries.

~~~
verganileonardo
Schumpeter used this term in 1942 to describe startups destroying incumbents.

"In Schumpeter's vision of capitalism, innovative entry by entrepreneurs was
the disruptive force that sustained economic growth, even as it destroyed the
value of established companies and laborers that enjoyed some degree of
monopoly power."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction)

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Bretlei
DC when used to mean Data Centre and Domain Controller.

IP when used to mean Intellectual Property and Internet Protocol.

There are more examples of this that I can't think of right now. Acronyms
should be defined the first time you use them and should never change meaning
for the rest of the conversation.

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tamersalama
"Productivity" as the only measure of success or team performance. I'm
wondering if other industries are as concerned with productivity.

"Resources" to talk about people/skills/talent

"Cloud" when used by management

"Cyber security" (Yeh)

"Steal the IP" (it gained traction at one point)

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25302throwaway
Bullish - i'm feeling bullish

Personas - we have to recreate product material for the different personas
(before it was for departments, postions, industry, etc..)

~~~
verganileonardo
Personas go beyond the things you mentioned, they should also consider
motivations, objections, fears, etc.

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sgillen
This one is a little silly, but I don't like when people use "exponentially"
to mean just really big. Like when someone says version 2.0 is exponentially
better than version 1.0.

I realize I'm being pedantic here but for some reason I still don't like it!

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framebit
\- Cognitive

\- Solutioning

\- Learning as a noun, as in "these are some good learnings"

\- Most things mentioned in Weird Al's brilliant lampoon of Judy Blue Eyes
using corporate-speak:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4)

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vikaskyadav
Hacks. Cutting-edge. Bleeding AI. Cognitive ML. Deep Learning. Decentralized.
Blockchain. Crypto.

Some guy with name "X" expressing personal opinions as "Xology" :p

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knopkop_
'quick question'

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orcs
'hack' really annoys me when used like this: 'life hack'. In this context:
'anyone got any good life hacks?'.

Your asking to tips or suggestions not fucking hacks.

~~~
matt_the_bass
I’d go even further and include “hacker” and “hacking” No, a hacker hacking
does not necessarily mean a bad guy doing bad stuff with computers.

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ecesena
Decentralized, especially when there’s a single company behind it.

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bjourne
Human "resources." Comparing people to metal ore that you can mine out of the
ground is dumb.

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fosco
not IT related but...

Artisan Hand Crafted * to table etc

any adjective food

More on topic is web bullshit generator [0]. When you need a good verb
adjective and noun all in one.

[0]
[https://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html](https://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html)

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settings11
Sometimes

 _private cloud_

 _machine learning_ becomes a buzzword;

Well, even DevOps has become one...

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fifnir
"With Biological Ingredients"

"Organic Cotton"

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kasey_junk
Realtime for anything that isn’t...

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BugsJustFindMe
"ask" as a noun.

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meekins
Cloud native

