VCs, management consultants, business gurus... all the same rubbish.
After working in Big 4 management consulting jobs for almost six years, I'm constantly surprised that phrases like "value-add" and "validate a couple of the core assumptions" still have the power to bring me out in a cold sweat.
But what is it going to take to end this nonsense? We know we're talking rubbish. Most of us hate these stock business-speak phrases, yet still most of us choose to hide behind them. Clients are partly to blame, but an industry that tries to differentiate itself by the bizarreness of its terminology (thereby fabricating "exclusivity")is more to blame.
When are we going to wake up and realise that speaking in plain, simple, understandable English does not make us look stupid and simple. Quite the opposite.
Your irony detector needs adjustment. As pg wrote in his introduction to this letter,
"I sent the YC partners an email saying I was growing increasingly impressed with one of the startups in the current batch and asking what they thought of them, and Harj Taggar replied with this brilliant piece of VC boilerplate."
The joke is on the people who think that Taggar was expressing what he thinks, rather than what he has heard too many venture capitalists say when they aren't willing to say what they think.
Nothing in GPs post is dependent on the thing being serious. This kind of language is unfortunately real (cringe), regardless of this particular piece of business poetry.
I've always enjoyed that one, especially this part:
"One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field."
It's hilarious, even though I have since decided I don't agree with "curing" the not un- formation.
FWIW, my position is that the difference between strict opposite and negation in English means that there is often a subtlety of meaning accurately expressed with a "not un-". It's essentially the English language equivalent of needing ways to express less than, greater than, less than or equal to, and greater than or equal to. I know Orwell was criticising people who misuse it, but he beats his fists a bit too hard for my liking in that essay. Related, I get annoyed when people aggressively attack "I don't disagree" with "then just say I AGREE!". The phrase "I don't disagree" is useful to convey "I might agree, I don't know whether I agree, I don't have an opinion, I agree with some of it and disagree with small details, any or all of these or more, but I'm certainly not disagreeing with you outright at this moment". In a lot of arguments these opinions fail spectacularly, since for the most part a combination of aggression, loudness, and a veneer of logical reasoning tends to win out over uncertainty and an attempt to consider all cases.
When are we going to wake up and realise that speaking in plain, simple, understandable English does not make us look stupid and simple.
In my experience, this kind of speak is not about sounding sophisticated, it's usually about saying nothing while coming across as sophisticated. I see this from business folks all the time; you rarely see it from technical people, but when you do, it's very annoying.
I've been playing around with the theory lately that the buzzwords and nonsense are an elaborate ritual not only to hide personal ignorance, but the fact that there is no known reliable way to solve most of the major issues surrounding the management of firms at all - yet, most peoples' careers revolve around pretending that the opposite is true.
After working in Big 4 management consulting jobs for almost six years, I'm constantly surprised that phrases like "value-add" and "validate a couple of the core assumptions" still have the power to bring me out in a cold sweat.
But what is it going to take to end this nonsense? We know we're talking rubbish. Most of us hate these stock business-speak phrases, yet still most of us choose to hide behind them. Clients are partly to blame, but an industry that tries to differentiate itself by the bizarreness of its terminology (thereby fabricating "exclusivity")is more to blame.
When are we going to wake up and realise that speaking in plain, simple, understandable English does not make us look stupid and simple. Quite the opposite.