this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Comic Strips

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[–] uservoid1@lemmy.world 68 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Bob is speaking the expected bullshit lingo, make sure he is only talking to clients and not bothering the dev team ever.

Five minutes later: Your calendar is bombard with recurring face-to-face project progress meetings

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 61 points 2 years ago (4 children)

0900 till 0930 - 15 min standup meeting. 1000 till 1100 - Pre meeting for customer meeting at 1100.
1100 till 1200 - Customer meeting.
1230 till 1300 - Post Meeting catchup.
1300 till 1330 - focus time.
1330 till 1430 - JIRA board update meeting.
1430 till 1500 - priorities review meeting.
1500 till 1645 - focus time.
1645 till 1730 - EOD standup.

[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 54 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I dont even work in corporate and reading this makes me yearn for the sweet, merciful embrace of death

[–] anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It really is alarming how entire teams of smart folks can be sidelined by one self-important asshole.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago

I once worked on a project with a 30 person team that was completely derailed by a PM who just had to hear the sound of his own voice all day long. But that wasn't enough for him, he needed other people to watch him listen to the sound of his own voice all day long. So he called multiple hours long meetings for the entire engineering team, every day of the week. Obviously the engineering team failed to deliver the project on time due to being constantly held hostage at that PM's meetings. So the outcome was that all 30 engineers were laid off, and that PM went on to terrorize another team. It's pretty sick that the person who was responsible for the failure was rewarded with another project, while his victims lost their jobs.

[–] Maalus@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

Happens way too often. The worst part is, that middle management listens to said asshole, instead of the people on the team, because they hired them to relay shit through. So when someone on the team complains or outlies the useless meetings, they are forever branded "not a team player".

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, there's my daily panic attack taken care of early

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago

Only one panic a day?

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

See you’re open in the afternoon, so I scheduled a demo session there with the new VP, so he can get a better sense of the product. Let’s meet up 30 min before for a dry-run

[–] Hasherm0n@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

This nearly gave me an aneurysm.

[–] drolex@sopuli.xyz 16 points 2 years ago

Kind reminder: you didn't fill the KPI matrix for the last 15 minutes. Please do it asap :)

[–] bort@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

talking to clients

you want him to define features and deadlines?

[–] uservoid1@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Ideally he and the client will tangle in endless discussions about features and deadlines, and the rest of the team could squeeze some real work instead of spending it on fruitless meetings.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Tell me everything that I could easily extrapolate from Jira tickets, but tell me in a meeting, and let's do that 7 times per week.

[–] affiliate@lemmy.world 32 points 2 years ago (4 children)

do people actually fall for this stuff? it seems like so many business management types are working overtime to make sure they're always up to date with the latest in corporate jargon. why? do people actually think these people are saying anything?

[–] johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

I dunno, I think business jargon exists for the same reason it exists in any other field. When you spend a lot of time focused on a niche topic you come up with really specialized vocabulary to describe it. Plus it probably qualifies as a form of code switching.

[–] callouscomic@lemm.ee 9 points 2 years ago

Apparently most of my chain of command at work falls for it.

[–] BluesF@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Yes. Most people use just a bit of business jargon nonsense. Not enough to really sound like they're talking completely from the wrong end, but just a nonsense word here and there. Usually they use them wrong, but because it's so prevalent it starts to fade into the background.

When people use almost nothing but buzzwords it's pretty transparent though, and almost always falls apart on questioning.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 23 points 2 years ago

Wait where's the talk about creating Value™ for the company? That needs to be mentioned constantly and incessantly.

[–] Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Wow, I've never wanted to punch a comic strip before.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This sounds like the landing page for half of the enterprise product home pages I've ever visited.

"No, fucking seriously, what does this product DO?"

It just kills me because surely it makes for worse sales and you'd think that'd help avoid buzzword vomit. It's one thing when it's your boss, but another when customers say "your marketing pages suuuuuck"

[–] Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 2 years ago

I have a theory that people who talk like this either;
Don't know what they do themselves, or
Know their job is bullshit and use this language to feel better about it.

[–] snrkl@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 years ago

I'm a product manager and I want to punch this comic strip!!!

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

We have one of those at my work, and he talks just like this. I'm honestly not sure what he does all day.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago

I'm honestly not sure what he does all day.

He talks like that all day. That's his job

[–] Halosheep@lemm.ee 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I have a project manager who sits next to me, and she is the most plainspoken person in the room. "why are we doing this? Seriously what's the point?" type questions and as blunt as they can be.

I also don't know what she does.

[–] Volkditty@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I am a project manager and I too don't know what I do all day.

[–] Hupf@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago

Hush, you're gonna make him nervous

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

His best friend is the Scrum master

[–] xhieron@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago

Reading this thread makes me feel like I need to update my blood pressure prescriptions.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 1 points 2 years ago

I've worked with some excellent SMs, they just do all the organisational crap like wrangling people in different teams together so I don't have to bother. Definitely seems like a job where a bullshit merchant could thrive though!

[–] Rolando@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago

Bonus panel: they rip his mask off, and he turns out to be an AI.

[–] Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I swear all my previous managers took the same manager class.

When they treated me like shit, every one of them tried to make a personal connection with me by asking about something I was wearing.

"Oh you like x band? I see youre wearing a shirt"

"Hey what does your bracelet represent"

"Sweet hat, I like fried chicken to."

Like the first thing they saw they said something about it. Oh you're trying to get to know me now after you've fucked me and I'm leaving?

[–] bitwaba@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

Sweet hat, I like fried chicken to.

Without any additional context, this is the greatest sentence I've ever read.

[–] Treczoks@lemm.ee 13 points 2 years ago

Yes, we had such a guy. The owner wanted to turn that guy into the CEO of the company. We rebelled. Suddenly, he was "no longer available for the job for health reasons".

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 12 points 2 years ago

The one guy I met IRL who talked like this for real, got caught embezzling from the company. lol

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

Why are you trying to make us throw up inside our own mouths?

[–] Shellbeach@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] Shellbeach@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Dans ce contexte, ça vient d'une série appelée Better off Ted, satire sur le monde corporate ; les protagonistes doivent faire une présentation sur un produit dont ils ne connaissent rien et qui s'appelle Jabberwocky

[–] Sorgan71@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

The boss creamed his pants

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

You can always tell when middle management has recently attended a seminar or bought a new "How To Be Successful" book because they start talking like this.

[–] KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

cool...cool...I quit.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago