№ V
Plain language, plainly
On corporate jargon, statuses of statuses, and the small dishonesty of not saying what you mean.
Corporate language exists to soften, hedge, and diffuse responsibility. It is extremely good at its job. It is also the single biggest tax on the speed and honesty of a working team.
We try to write the way we’d talk to a smart friend who hadn’t been in the meeting. We were late because the API was broken. Not delivery encountered upstream-dependency-related velocity headwinds. It’s not a style preference; it’s a thing that changes how decisions get made.
A short glossary of phrases we don’t use
Placeholder — list a handful of jargon phrases we’ve banned ourselves from, with the plain-English equivalent next to each.