17 luglio 2013

Sick of CorporateSpeak

For a while, certain terms at the office (I work in corporate America) have bothered the hell out if me. Here are some gems and why I hate them.

Onboard or On-board (stress on the first  syllable): Used as a verb. As in, "We need to establish a standard process before we onboard contributors to this project." 

While this could EASILY be replaced with normal verbs like "hire" or "involve", it's not. Why? I don't know. It's a stupid word. We don't work with boats, and "on board" should be a prepositional phrase, and NOTHING ELSE! When I hear this term I think of "waterboard" (only other verb I know of that ends with "board") and I feel really sorry for these poor contributors. They think they're getting hired for a project but in reality they're being subjected to practices which were banned at the Geneva Convention.

Leverage. Again, used as a verb. Like, "How can we leverage our existing products into new sales?" Translation: how can we reuse what we already have to pretend like it's a new product so that we can sucker people into buying something that's not actually new." My reaction when I hear this? Someone please just punch me in the face and knock me out. 

The Market. Ok, this is a legitimate noun, I just hate when it's used in the singular. As in, "the market doesn't respond well to this design" or "the market is asking for more interactive content." No. The Market is not a single person and shouldn't be spoken of as one, especially when the "market research" consists of the opinions of ten people who filled out a survey for $50.

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