The Old New Thing

Microspeak - The Old New Thing

Microspeak: Pencils down

August 26, 2008 Aug 26, 2008 08/26/08
Raymond Chen
I'm particularly fascinated by Microspeak terms which nobody actually knows the meaning of. You can defend jargon by saying that it's a shorthand way of talking in order to improve communication, but if nobody actually knows what it means, the in order to improve communication part is completely turned on its head. The Microspeak that ...

Microspeak: The long pole

August 5, 2008 Aug 5, 2008 08/5/08
Raymond Chen
The long pole is the part of the project that is on the critical path due to its length. For example, if you have a project that consists of three independent sub-projects, then the sub-project with the longest completion date is the long pole. The etymology of this term is simultaneously obvious yet hard to pin down. Intuitively, the long ...

Microspeak: Well, actually management-speak

July 17, 2008 Jul 17, 2008 07/17/08
Raymond Chen
I hate management-speak. Here's an example from an internal Web site. The purpose of this Web site is two-fold. Wow, let's look at the first stated purpose. It goes on for so long and uses blatant management-speak such as "facilitate" and "leverage" that by the time it's over, I forget how the sentence started. Going back and ...

Microspeak: Pricing uplift

June 17, 2008 Jun 17, 2008 06/17/08
Raymond Chen
In a conference call with investors last year, investor relations general manager Colleen Healy described the effect of business editions of Windows thus: As we shared with you previously, Windows Vista business generates over five times the pricing uplift over Windows Vista Home Basic than does Windows Vista Home Premium. Also known as ...

Microspeak: On-board (verb)

May 22, 2008 May 22, 2008 05/22/08
Raymond Chen
Here are a few citations. On a list of activities: Presumably they mean bring on board. What makes this particularly interesting is that they didn't convert a noun to a verb; they converted a prepositional phrase to a verb, demonstrating once again the malleability of the English language. Here's a snippet from a blog post which seems ...

Microspeak: Newplacement

March 28, 2008 Mar 28, 2008 03/28/08
Raymond Chen
When talking about why people buy computers, there are two broad categories, "replacement computers" (those which replace an older machine being retired) and "new placement computers" (those which do not). Now, sure, you have to call them something, but "new placements" sounds kind of markety. Then again, I felt the same way about using "...

Microspeak: Assorted babble

February 22, 2008 Feb 22, 2008 02/22/08
Raymond Chen
Here are some phrases I jotted down during a meeting. I don't even know what meeting it was. (They were jotted on some scratch paper.) These don't count so much as Microspeak as they do just assorted management babble. Sometimes I wish management would speak in plain English. But then the rest of us might realize that they don't know what ...

Microspeak: Housing

January 30, 2008 Jan 30, 2008 01/30/08
Raymond Chen
The real estate department at Microsoft has their own weird jargon. In the real estate world, you don't "work" in a building; you are "housed" there. Here are a few citations. The new buildings will be able to house N workers. Employees housed at Facility X will be able to use temporary parking spaces being constructed at Location ...

Management-speak: Norming around mechanisms

December 21, 2007 Dec 21, 2007 12/21/07
Raymond Chen
This is the entire text of an actual piece of email I received from a high-level manager in response to some feedback I sent. Thanks. There is a lot of norming around any of these mechanisms as well as a certain amount of ability to hold ones ground in these interactions in addition to the admin of the rule being good enough as discussed...