Comment by kirinan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kirinan | Hacker News Reader

After working many corporate jobs over the years, this kind of rhetoric seems trite and overused. "We are stream-lining our processes and going to empower our employees to change the world!!!!". So many corporations that fell behind the trends and are just trying to reinvent themselves to that they can get back on track use the same words. However, in this case, it seems different. Microsoft has over the past few months kinda proved that they mean it. Open sourcing .NET and other technologies, playing nice with many different startups like Xamarin to help empower and push them forward on their stack. It really does feel different and for the sake of the technology world, I hope they do. We need more than 2 giants competing in the consumer market, and we need people willing to dare to move the needle forward, pushing the bar everyday. If there is a company with the means and resources to do it, its Microsoft. I don't work there, but I hope an employee can shed some more light on the internal changes that are taking place.

It may be unfair to Nadella's abilities, but his 3000 word essay reads like typical techno fluff. This can be a red flag because other innovative CEO's write in a much more straightforward manner instead of corporate doublespeak: Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Reed Hastings, Elon Musk.

I read a book[1] about corporate speak and it opened my eyes to the fact that it's actually the lingua franca of middle managers and not visionary CEOs. I'm also convinced that practitioners of corporate-speak are truly not self-aware of how vacuous it sounds.

I wonder if venture capitalists look at corporate-speak from a founder as a red flag signaling mediocrity.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Business-People-Speak-Like-Idiots/prod...

Venkatesh Rao wrote an excellent piece on this 'baby talk'; internet classic.

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...

I think that practitioners of corporate-speak are surrounded by so many other people who corporate-speak that they don't realize how idiotic it sounds to everyone else. To them, they're normal words that actually mean real things – because they are normal words that actually mean real things.

I think the real issue it people who use them as buzzwords. They say 'synergize our corporate efficiencies to maximize our value proposition…' in the same way that someone else might say 'make things better': it conveys meaning, but only in the most vague and useless of terms instead of going into specifics.

That last word really resonates: Specifics.

Why is it so hard for people to boil down their message? Is it fear? Is it ignorance? Is it lying?

It must be some combination of these for if presented with a life and death situation I doubt corporate psycho babble would spew forth.

In general, in the words of the late/great Mr. George Carlin, "People tend to use extra words when they want something to sounds more important than it really is."

I would encourage everyone at M$, and frankly anyone that hasn't seen it, to watch George Carlin's bit about the boarding process of airlines. A couple gems worth note (that could easily be translated to corporate speak):

1. Please look around your immediate seating area SEAT! 2. Items you may have brought on board. Well, I may have brought my tiddly-winks collection, but I didn't, so I'm not going to look for it!

If I worked at M$, and could roll into work anytime I wanted, take off early without anyone noticing, two hour lunch breaks, and so on and so forth - I'd be scared. Layoffs are the next step after letters like these, and you're the fat.

To sum it up nicely in a way only George could do: "More shit from the bogus captain!"

"Today I want to synthesize the strategic direction and massive opportunity I've been discussing for the last few months".

I feel jargon like this is particularly unfortunate when used in a rousing team-building speech. Maybe these words capture some nuance which could not be expressed as concisely without them, but language is also used to separate in-groups from out-groups. To me, this use of "synthesize" gives off a strong visceral sense that "this man is not one of us, he spends all his times in insular CEO-only circles". He could at least have had someone else proof-read his speech and point out things like this.

There is a lot of corporate speak. That said, he is an insider that knows what needs to be done, and is willing to make changes. I hope that he's able to pull it off.

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