Welcome to tech, here’s your jargon translator

Photo by Anna Shvets

So you’ve landed a job in tech. Congratulations!

But don’t pop that bubbly just yet, because the real work starts here. Namely: do you speak tech?

No?

Don’t panic. Just bookmark this handy jargon translator — you’ll be confidently serving up the hottest buzzwords and impressing your peers in no time. Because to speak tech is to be tech.

Double-click
(verb)

Example: “Love that idea, can we double-click on that for a minute?”
Translation: “I’m going to talk more about that thing.”

The digital world has not devoured enough of our lives yet. So in your new tech role, try to imagine everything — even abstract things like conversations and ideas — as pixellated icons on a screen to be clicked, double-clicked, right-clicked, dragged, and so on. That way we can pretend we’re already living in the “metaverse” while we impatiently wait for it to become reality. Fun!

The great thing is, you can keep double-clicking on concepts until you forget the origin of the conversation. See also: “drill down”.

Scope creep
(compound noun)

Example: “We should be careful not to succumb to scope creep.”
Translation: “That’s too much work.”

Far from being some sort of Rear Window situation, “scope creep” is basically what you cry when it feels like someone’s trying to audaciously add to the workload (scope) through their suggested “improvements”.

Scope creep is a debate winner — nobody wants to be identified as a scope creeper — so use it abundantly to protect your own interests.

Take offline
(phrasal verb)

Example: “Could we take this offline? I’m just conscious of time…”
Translation: “Let’s talk about this later.”

When the internet was invented, it was considered subordinate to the “real” world. But now we know for certain that the internet is superior — thus being more relevant and tangible than the physical world ever was.

To honour this relationship shift, make sure you always refer to the digital world as “online” and the physical world as “offline”.

Of course, the idea of taking a conversation offline — where it can’t be monitored, recorded, or processed for machine learning — is pretty horrifying. Lucky for you, “offline” still means “online” at many tech companies, just in a different meeting to the one you’re currently in.

Confusing? Not really.

Hard stop
(compound noun)

Example: “This meeting has a hard stop at two-thirty.”
Translation: “The meeting ends at two-thirty.”

Meetings are scheduled to end at a certain time, but can sometimes drag on a bit if Steve the content designer starts blathering on about tripwires, usability testing, engineering scope, and other things that should really be ‘taken offline’ (see above).

To avoid this catastrophe, make sure to announce that your meeting has a “hard stop”. This will ensure the meeting finishes when it’s supposed to finish, as opposed to those soft stop meetings in which Steve continues to prattle away well into the afternoon.

In fact, it’s recommended you implement hard stops into all your daily activities — reading, bathing, family meals — to avoid even 0.01 Mbps of your bandwidth wasted on frivolities such as socialising.

Plus one
(adjective)

Example: “Plus one to that.”
Translation: “I agree.”

Just been told “plus one”? Sorry, you and your partner/friend haven’t been invited to a wedding. It just means that someone’s agreeing with what you said.

Communication will be so much easier once everyone starts using simple mathematical values to calculate the quality of ideas. Agree is +1, strongly agree is +2, disagree -1, and so on. A clear, survival-of-the-fittest meritocracy. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Do async
(phrasal verb)

Example: “The majority of the team are off today, so if you need feedback let’s just do it async.”
Translation: “Let’s message one another at different times.”

A close cousin of ‘take offline’. If synchronous communication happens altogether, like an Olympic swim team fluttering their legs in the air harmoniously as one, asynchronous communication is more like a relay race — you say something, then I say something, then Marta says something, etc.

Back in the ol’ chunky computer days, this was known as sending an email with everyone CC’d, then waiting a week or so for everyone to respond.

Make sure to use the shortened version “async” — otherwise you might be labelled a filthy time thief. And quite rightly, too.

Bandwidth
(noun)

Example: “I’m not sure I have the bandwidth to take that on.”
Translation: “I don’t have time to do that.”

As mentioned above, the internet has become our de facto environment (praise be Berners-Lee). Crusty, hollow, and — quite frankly — dull concepts like ‘time’ are no longer relevant in our pixel paradise. “Bandwidth” performs much better across all KPIs: digitisation, gen-z upvotivity, and cutting-edginess.

If you say you don’t have the bandwidth, it sounds like you’ve processed some complex, systematic computation — the result of which ultimately absolves you of any agency in changing the situation: 

…Given today’s pollen count, tomorrow’s moon, and last weekend’s Jeopardy questions, I’m not able to help.

Whereas if you say you don’t have the ‘time’, you just sound like an arse.

Dogfood
(verb)

Example: “I compel everyone in this team to dogfood our product.”
Translation: “Use the product.”

If you’re making dog food but not tasting it yourself — just serving it up to, you know, dogs — do you really understand the quality of your own product?

No, no you do not.

Everyone in your company should be dogfooding, and dogfeeding each other warm, heaped spoonfuls of the stuff you churn into the market.

“Ew”, some people whine. “Can’t we come up with a different term?” No, because dog food isn’t always pleasant. It’s the perfect analogy.

Pain point
(compound noun)

Example: “That’s a real pain point for our users.”
Translation: “That’s a problem.”

Adopted from massage parlour parlance, “pain point” is better than just saying “issue” or “problem” because your product really matters. Your users really want it to thrive, so any feature that’s less than optimal is deeply agonizing. Likewise, anything that works as — or better than — expected is an uninhibited thrill.

Your average user’s journey is a roller coaster ride of extreme emotions. Recognise it as such.

Battlestation
(noun)

Example: “Time to equip your battlestation!”
Translation: “Set up your office”

Perched precariously at a kitchen counter with one kid smearing peanut butter onto your keyboard and the other screaming blue murder at your feet? No, you’re not, you’re at your battlestation!

Everyone knows that work isn’t work anymore — it’s play.

When editing a spreadsheet, just imagine you’re picking off TIE fighters with the Millennium Falcon’s laser cannons. Pew pew pew! The war against improperly formatted cells has only just begun.

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