Thursday, February 19, 2009

Business Jargon Hatred

So my friend David Silverman writes a blog for the Harvard Business. Yes, the Harvard Business thing. The quick back story is that David has always been a talented writer. We went from kindergarten, where I remember our first argument, all the way through high school together. He has always written great and funny stories as long as I can remember. Don't believe me? I dare you to not enjoy his book: Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars

As I was saying, David writes a good business blog. Today's entry was entitled "10 Business Words to Ban" He then asks the reader if they have any suggestions. This brought forth the following from within me:

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It is probably long done with, but God I hated "functionality."

"We will add functionality"
"Here the functionality will..."

It was always said by by people who had no concept of what they were talking about and were proud of it. They even had the nerve to deliver it with an air of arrogance. As a programmer, I would sit in meetings and listen to the owner of our company (not my current company), a sale person or an IA person say this. I began to mentally insert the word "magic" in place of "functionality" and the statement would still have the same level of sincerity. Unfortunately my little exercise didn't help my frustration levels.
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I don't know if my above mini-rant has any meaning or contributes to the world in any way, but David's article just sent me into a momentary trance. I don't know why I completely forgot about it until just now. Perhaps the "functionality" overuse caused my brain to create another personality to help me cope. I think his name is Arnold.