How People At Tech Companies Communicate
I was in the Army for 8 years. The Army loves to use acronyms. And soldiers love to repeat the same phrases over and over. “For your situational awareness,” “this is unsatisfactory,” “out-freaking-standing soldier.”
When I left the Army for tech, I thought meetings would be different. Meetings now are no different — just the words being used.
Here are some of the most common uttered phrases in meetings and emails and what they mean.
But will it scale?
Will this product make us a lot of money or not?
Let’s not boil the ocean.
I don’t know what I’m saying, but I heard an Executive say it when she was mad and it made everyone get quiet — so I’ll say it too.
Let’s circle back on this.
We accomplished nothing in this meeting. Let’s wait a month and have another meeting, where we’ll circle back again.
We need to do a two-week sprint on this.
Don’t expect to make it home for dinner with your family for the next two weeks.
We need to work better cross-functionally.
Everyone on our team is socially awkward and lacks the emotional intelligence to talk to other humans.
I’m looping in [insert name] to help answer.
You emailed me because I’m supposed to know the answer, but since I don’t, I’ll make it someone else’s responsibility.
I’m cc’ing [insert manager] for awareness
I’m insecure — even though I don’t need to include my manager, I’m doing so, anyway. I’m working on in weekly sessions with my therapist.
Let’s all take a step back here.
Everyone is talking rapidly and firing off great ideas and leaving me behind. I have nothing intelligent to add, so I’ll try to appear smarter than I am.
What is the problem we’re trying to solve?
Why did we even call this meeting?
Is someone going to email out a summary of the meeting?
I was too busy checking my phone and Instagram stories — will someone please help me since I’m lazy.
We need concrete action items.
Even though we won’t hold ourselves accountable to these actions items, saying concrete makes it seem like we will.
Thanks in advance! :)
I’m trying to guilt you into doing what I’ve asked, hopefully the :) is what seals the deal.
If we’re going to get this done, we all need to get better at multi-tasking.
If you don’t have at least 20 tabs with different Google Docs open, you’re not trying hard enough.
Happy Tuesday!
I don’t have the courage to ask for what I need, so I’ll soften things up to appear friendly.
Thanks!
I know I appeared passive aggressive in that email, so I’ll end it with something cheerful so you’re not too upset with me.
Make sense?
I’m being vague, I know. It’s because I don’t want to tell you what’s actually on my mind.
I’ll just let you guess and this will turn into a back and forth that could have been solved if I’d just said, “I’d like to know what you think about my proposals and if we can move on to the next steps.”
This is mission critical.
I never read the story about the boy that cried wolf. Nobody will catch on that I call 12 things a week mission critical. They’ll continue to think this time, it really is.
Andrew lives in San Francisco and works in tech. Before tech, he spent 8 years in the Army and 3 years working at a non-profit. He’s never guilty of the above. Thanks!
