First, a confession: I speak tech.
First, a confession: I speak tech.
I know, it’s hard to believe a writer like me would be able to develop some core competencies in a different vertical. Alas, it’s true. Before I became a journalist, I touched base with the best of them. I calculated CAC with growth hackers and whiskey Friday-ed with SEO experts.
At age 24, I was a senior content strategist—still not sure what that means. At 25, I was a director of business development—pretty sure no one knows what that means. But if there’s anything more hollow than the tech industry’s job titles, it’s the industry’s jargon.
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Ladies and gentlemen of Silicon Valley, Beach, Alley, and Forest: It’s time to acquifire your buzzwords. Here are three tips to help you course-correct faster than you can say “post-money valuation.”
Techies frequently speak to each other like seven-year-olds talking in pig Latin. They think they’re clever, but they usually sound ridiculous to the outside world. Take, for example, a recent pitch I received from a new crypto-based social network:
The universal, decentralized solution for content creators works flawlessly together with peer-to-peer incentives, monetization and a free-speech foundation to amplify organic reach and transparency on the Ethereum blockchain leveraging smart contract technology.
Stop wasting time on meaningless adjectives and adverbs (“works flawlessly together with X $TWTR” is no more meaningful, than “works with X”). Remember, you’re not getting paid by the syllable, nor the word. A price point is a price. A brain dump is a meeting. Economize your language and you can optimize your brain power for the big decisions.
If I weren’t a baseball fan, there’d be so many curveballs coming out of left field, it’d be impossible to get a win. Most sports references are cliché Americanisms that can alienate your coworkers and make you sound like a douche.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard “MVP” or “CLV” in an all-hands meeting, I’d have enough ARR to bootstrap my SMB. I know, it sounds impressive to flaunt your startup slang, but a business meeting shouldn’t require a translation sheet.
I wouldn’t be writing this if I weren’t already dogfooding it myself. But I don’t always have the bandwidth to translate your tech speak into English. Please iterate on your diction and sunset your slang.
