{"id":3218,"date":"2009-10-29T23:27:58","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T03:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=3218"},"modified":"2009-10-29T23:27:58","modified_gmt":"2009-10-30T03:27:58","slug":"a-little-too-on-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/29\/a-little-too-on-point\/","title":{"rendered":"A Little Too On Point"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure that there has been a time in my life, and will again be a time in my life, when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.randsinrepose.com\/archives\/2009\/07\/13\/the_words_you_wear.html\">the skewering of tech industry management jargon done at Rands In Repose<\/a> was\/will be hilarious.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;ve got to tell you, right at the moment, some of those things are just a little too on target for me to laugh, you know.<\/p>\n<p>Examples:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Alignment<\/strong> \u2014 \u201cI\u2019ve yet to convince people that I am correct.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Executive Summary<\/strong> \u2014 A brief assessment given to executives. If this summary were shown to those who actually do the work, they would giggle.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Future Proofing<\/strong> \u2014 Architecting a product so that it accounts for things that don\u2019t yet exist and can\u2019t be predicted.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Heads-up<\/strong> \u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re screwed.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Milestones<\/strong> \u2014 Magically created dates that mean nothing, but give executives the impression that progress is being made.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Socialization<\/strong> \u2014 The process by which an idea that no one wants to do is forced on others.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Solution<\/strong> \u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t know what your product does.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the rest at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.randsinrepose.com\/archives\/2009\/07\/13\/the_words_you_wear.html\">the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I felt a little better about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.randsinrepose.com\/glossary_alpha.html\">the Management Glossary<\/a> at the same site when I started browsing it, seeing definitions that I quite liked such as;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Architect: <\/strong> An engineer who knows what he\/she is doing. If an architect says something which appears insane, it&#8217;s worth firing off a couple follow-up questions as they are often smarter than you.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>NIH (&#8220;Not Invented Here&#8221;):<\/strong> Term to describe behavior where an engineering team will not consider working with anyone&#8217;s code except their own. It&#8217;s not that the external code is good or bad, it&#8217;s just foreign which means it must be reviewed, reformatted&#8230; oh, what the hell. LET&#8217;S REWRITE THE WHOLE DAMNED THING. Billions of dollars have been lost to NIH. I mean it. Billions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But then my eye settled on the punch-line to the whole affair&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Computer Associates:<\/strong> A sixteen billion dollar company based in New York that you don&#8217;t know. Seriously, name a single product by these guys. I dare you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ouch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">I&#8217;m sure that there has been a time in my life, and will again be a time in my life, when the skewering of tech industry management jargon done at Rands In Repose was\/will be hilarious. But I&#8217;ve got to tell you, right at the moment, some of those things are just a little too on target for me to&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/29\/a-little-too-on-point\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[29,422,328],"class_list":["post-3218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storytime","tag-computer-industry","tag-jargon","tag-work","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-PU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3218"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3221,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions\/3221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}