Friends, have you heard the slanderous talk of major Internet companies? Combination boxing, empowerment, ecology, top-level design, granularity... these words that are active in the mouths of employees of major Internet companies have caused PTSD to many people. Even Zhang Yiming was disturbed. At the 2021 ByteDance annual meeting, like a crosstalk master performing "Sign up for the dish," he came up with a piece of Internet slang, satirizing the people of the big Internet companies who do not speak human words:
"In the past, we mainly relied on the information distribution capabilities provided by recommendation technology, cross-terminal linkage, and self-research on multiple products to achieve in-depth co-construction, form a combination, and create a content ecological closed loop to empower customers and users to create value. In the future, we will increase the value of different horizontal scenarios and extend service links. At the same time, we will meet user needs in depth, and use the natural potential of human age to deeply penetrate users of multiple ages..."
Following Boss Zhang’s words, Dachang’s slang became popular, and the media began to report on this phenomenon. We also talked about this topic at the time.
At the beginning of 2024, foreign countries have also begun to criticize Internet slang.
Recently on TikTok, a series of videos called CorporateErin became popular, with tens of millions of views.
CorporateErin can be understood as "Erin of big companies". You may have guessed what the video content is by looking at the name.
That's right, the entire series of videos is actually about the same thing, that is, this sister named Lisa plays the role of Irene, a small leader of a large company, and shows the workplace speech skills of Silicon Valley elites to the camera with a smile.
Imagine that when you turn on your mobile phone to watch short videos after work, a person dressed similar to your colleague’s leader suddenly pops up on the screen. He talks to you about "pain points" and "user mentality" for three minutes, and then tells you:
"I have high expectations for you, but I can't see your core competitiveness. If you continue like this, you will be fired at any time."
How do you feel? Eighty percent of the time, you feel unlucky and look down. This is how foreigners feel now.
They are also workers, and they cannot withstand the bombardment of this set of rhetoric. They still pretend to be arrogant after hearing the slander of the big factories.
The phenomenon caused by Erin has also been specifically reported on Yahoo News, Business Insider, Huffington Post and other websites.
Sometimes Erin is the one who doesn't sleep at 4 a.m. and suddenly has a video meeting to discuss the company's strategic initiatives in 2024.
In the dim light of the night, everyone looked at the future together through the screen and imagined togetherdeliverables.
Sometimes Erin comes back from vacation, radiant and full of energy.
She crazily fed chicken soup to her subordinates who had been working for a week and talked freely.process gripperandfinal value.
Sometimes Irene explains the company's bereavement leave policy to her subordinates one-on-one, and suddenly hears the sad news that her subordinate's family has died unexpectedly. She pretends to cover her mouth in shock and feels sad for the other person.
But within a few minutes, she regained her familiar face and told her subordinates that even if your family unfortunately dies, you still have to go to work because that's how the company stipulates.
The old man in the comment area couldn't stand it any longer. People on the capitalist side asked the company to quickly invite Irene to join. They need this kind of talent.
However, there were obviously more workers. They were almost out of breath and wanted to resign on the spot and wish her to reunite with her family in heaven.
In addition, a large number of foreigners directly shot videos with Irene, and when you clicked on the phone, you thought it was an HR interview scene.
EOD, EOJ, EOA...a bunch of incomprehensible words popped out of Irene's mouth, and the elder brother was confused on the spot.
Seeing that her brother was scratching her head, Irene reluctantly explained:EOD=endofDecember(End of December),EOJ=endofjob(End of work),EOF=endofafternoon(evening)…
If you want to understand what Irene, and people like Irene in reality, are saying, you have to either ask directly, or you can only guess.
The comment section couldn’t stand it anymore, so I quickly gave an EOC——EndOfConversation(End of conversation), shut up now.
Maybe some friends don't know that although after several years of evolution, domestic Internet slang has formed proprietary routines and templates, there has always been a trend similar to "Internet slang" abroad, which is the corporate accent mentioned by the foreign media above, which translates to corporate accent.
However, I prefer to call it "big factory style", which is roughly equivalent to our domestic "Alibaba flavor" and "Byte style".
Here are a few simple examples:
Blue-skythinking, literally translated as blue sky thinking, encourages people to think creatively without being inhibited by existing beliefs or ideas. You can think of it as brainstorming.
Boilingtheocean, which literally means boiling the ocean, actually refers to an impossible task.
The origin of this kind of slang is much earlier than the slang of domestic big companies.
There is an article on the official website of Reve University in the United States that talks about the history of the development of slang.
Since the 1930s, managers have gradually paid attention to workers' psychology in order to improve work efficiency and ease labor relations. After World War II, major companies also began to focus on how to help employees improve productivity.
Big factory talk soon followed, and in the 1980s, Peter Drucker (the father of modern management) collaborated with General Electric to develop the Work-Out program to help managers and employees solve problems faster.
He gave new meaning to low-hanging fruit as "easy problems," rattlesnakes as "obvious problems," pythons as "challenging problems."
But around that time, the big factory atmosphere was starting to smell a bit bad.
American poet, author and literary critic David Lehman wrote in his 1991 book "Signs of the Times":"Jargon is a linguistic sleight of hand that makes old hat look new again; it brings a sense of novelty and specious profundity to ideas that would appear superficial, trite, frivolous, or false if stated directly."
To be fair, some slang is actually quite practical.
Last year, Preply surveyed more than 1,000 American professionals on their feelings about jargon. Workers preferred it.corecompetency(core competitiveness), Overachiever(Exceeding expectations),Self-starter(self-management)This kind of word.
But rightRockstar(star employee),Ninja(Proficient in a certain type of work)This word is very offensive.
The reason is simple. The former is a new vocabulary with a highly condensed concept, which is very effective in communication. But the latter, rock stars, ninjas, what the hell are they, no one can understand them without explanation.
As for why people feel uncomfortable when they hear slang?
In addition to the fact that many words have no use value, I wonder if you have noticed that in Erin's video, she also has a set of adapted actions when she speaks slang.
Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, believes that Erin tried her best to show a facial expression that puts her in your shoes and thinks for you, while leaning forward to make a sincere gesture.
To put it bluntly, everything she said lacked sincerity.
She doesn't put herself in your shoes, and she doesn't want to think for you, so she has to show this attitude to make her words more convincing.
If Irene really thinks about others, then how could she use her 36°C mouth to say such cold words as "Your whole family is dead but you still have to go to work" and "I'll give you two or three days to have a baby and then work hard."
Foreign netizens beat up Irene from afar
A woman named Irene in real life was defeated by Irene on TikTok.
The real Erin is a former marketing professional who has experienced this kind of corporate culture, so she still dares not watch Erin’s videos.
She said that she had unlimited paid time off at the company, but she had to go through 58hoops, that is, to overcome many difficulties.
Even the vice president of Microsoft's Azure cloud platform couldn't help complaining on LinkedIn, and he was inundated with slander from big companies.
This kind of squeeze and encroachment of work on life made her feel that she had lost the meaning of life when she lost her job.
Because work used to be the largest part of her day, and that part disappeared the moment she was fired.
It is a common saying nowadays that people are alienated by their work.
Whether it is Irene on TikTok or Irene in real life, the self they show is no longer themselves, but a cog in the company.
During work, everyone subconsciously speaks slang instead of simple and understandable human words.
Don’t the employees themselves know that they are talking nonsense? In fact, they find it difficult to understand and even complain about it everywhere.
But slang is indeed the best way to package your work, and leaders love to hear it. To be honest, I collected a "Complete of Bullshit" PDF a few years ago, and it has provided a lot of help to my work in the past.
The boss is also very aware that the employees are talking nonsense. The employees wrote in the weekly report, "Use combination punch to help empower users, open ecological closed loops, help customers extend service links, strengthen user perception, break boundaries, and create ecological operations"...
It looks awesome, but in fact it just took a day to type code.
But most of the bosses who are in charge of the company choose to let this behavior go, because this behavior is beneficial in some aspects.
Relying on Internet slang, layoffs have become the
"impacts"(shock), "restructuring"(Reorganization),
Became in the country“Optimize” and “deliver talents to society”.
What was originally a naked conflict turned into a petty fight in an instant. Just like the words "Winter is here, can spring be far behind?" It sounds full of hope for the future and yearning for beauty, but for insects that are dying in autumn, it is the Lord of Hell knocking on the door.
In an environment full of slang, individuals are powerless to resist and may even subconsciously follow the crowd.
It’s not that workers are unaware of this problem, but in this environment full of slang, individual resistance is too weak, and instead they follow the crowd and talk slang. It’s easier for your boss to give you a promotion and raise your salary, and they will praise you for being professional and integrating into the work environment.
Every time you say "empowerment", "breakdown" and "cognitive advantage", you will feel more harmonious with other colleagues. In the PPT shown at the meeting, you talked about "combination boxing" and "engine", and your boss applauded after watching it.
At this moment, you are immersed in the company culture and become a glorious screw.
But after I quit a big factory and lost a lot of hair, I would probably have a completely different feeling when I look back at the slang of big factories.
Perhaps only Na Ying’s Weibo back then best represents his inner feelings:Damn, the most annoying people are pretentious.