Translating job desc's/management-speak

[bigred]

I don't mean the buzzword corporate bingo.....I mean BS like this (I've actually lived through this kind of $#%!@):


STATEMENT: "Must be 'self-starter' (or) able to work with little or no supervision"
TRANSLATION: "Your supervisor can't be bothered to actually supervise you in any way. You're on your own. But we still expect you to magically figure out everything - even though you're new and have no idea how we want things done."

STATEMENT: "Must be highly motivated"
TRANSLATION: "You're going to be treated like sh** and we fully expect you to bend over and take it. If you complain, you're not a 'team player' and we will rake you through the mud any way we can, making your life so miserable you'll leave....if we can't drum up some BS to ax you first that is."

STATEMENT: "Must be able to work in fast-paced environment."
TRANSATION: "We won't give you the time you should get to work complete any tasks because we will have screwed around too long and/or made poor decisions that have put the whole project on a ridiculous time crunch."


Others?

 

[Skeptic]

I don't mean the buzzword corporate bingo.....I mean BS like this (I've actually lived through this kind of $#%!@):


STATEMENT: "Must be 'self-starter' (or) able to work with little or no supervision"
TRANSLATION: "Your supervisor can't be bothered to actually supervise you in any way. You're on your own. But we still expect you to magically figure out everything - even though you're new and have no idea how we want things done."

STATEMENT: "Must be highly motivated"
TRANSLATION: "You're going to be treated like sh** and we fully expect you to bend over and take it. If you complain, you're not a 'team player' and we will rake you through the mud any way we can, making your life so miserable you'll leave....if we can't drum up some BS to ax you first that is."

STATEMENT: "Must be able to work in fast-paced environment."
TRANSATION: "We won't give you the time you should get to work complete any tasks because we will have screwed around too long and/or made poor decisions that have put the whole project on a ridiculous time crunch."


Others?

We can start with the jobs themselves.

Open any employment section and look at government jobs. Just what, exactly, do all those "facilitators", "project coordinators", "advisors", "interdepartmental managers" (etc., etc. etc.) DO?

(Apart from shuffling reams of unreadable papers from one tray to another, that is.)

 

[Skeptic]

A few others:

"Challanging job" = constant crisis mode.

"Must learn to interface well" = 90% of your time is spent sending e-mails back and forth, in a vain attempt to understand a). what the hell they want you to do, b). why they never do what you ask them to.

"Independent thinker who can take responsibility" = This job has 'fire my @$$ the first time I screw up' written all over it.

 

[TragicMonkey]

"Can work well in groups" = you're going to be doing other people's work for them, and they will expect to take the credit for it, and if you protest that you have your own work to do, or take credit for your work, or if there is a microscopic flaw in the work they take credit for, you will be accused of "not being a team player". The only defense is to be so imcompetent that nobody would want to crib your work.

 

[luchog]

I don't mean the buzzword corporate bingo.....I mean BS like this (I've actually lived through this kind of $#%!@):

Here're some that I've personally encountered, or watched friends and co-workers deal with.

Original: "Candidate must be flexible and respond well to new challenges; while focussing on core competencies."
Translation: "You're going to end up doing a lot of crap work, completely unrelated to your job, that no one else wants to do; and you'll get squat for training or assistance. Oh, and we still expect you to do your normal work, too."

Original: "Must have experience in a similar position, and have strong on-the-job learning skills."
Translation: "We have no formalized training available, and the only documentation we can find is several years/revisions out of date. And your supervisor has never actually done anything like this, so is completely worthless as a source of information or assistance; though there's a guy in another department who did the job a while back, so you might be able to bug him for help."

Original: "Must be goal-oriented, and motivated to exceed standards; and appreciate the value of hard work. Able to work odd hours with plenty of opportunites for overtime available."
Translation: "Not only are our metrics requirements ridiculously high; but we're woefully understaffed and are too incompetant to change that anytime soon. Especially since we figured out that it's cheaper to pay for a bunch of hours of mandatory overtime than it is to hire more staff."

Original: "Candidate must have strong interpersonal skills."
Translation: "On top of dealing with the most obnoxious and unreasonable customers you've ever encountered, our office management consists exclusively of self-important morons, borderline sociopaths, and spoiled 2-year-olds."

Original: "Can adapt to a rapidly-changing work environment with alacrity and grace."
Translation: "Our department is so hammered by near-monthly re-orgs and the highest employee churn rate in the industry that you'll never know who you're reporting to, what you're supposed to be doing, or who needs to sign off on your work; but we still expect you to be productive beyond human capacity."

Original: "Excellent opportunity for advancement."
Translation: "Our organization is a textbook illustration of the Peter Principle in action, our requirements are insanely high, and middle-management just loves firing people to cover their own f**kups."

Original: "Ability to coordinate well with project managers and staff."
Translation: "Your boss is the most anal-retentive micromanager you will ever encounter, and requires so many project updates, status reports, and strategy meetings that you won't have enough time to do your real job."

Original: "A company on the cutting edge, looking for people who work hard to stay ahead of the curve. The right candidate will be willing to trade security for a chance to revolutionize the industry."
Translation: "The business is another poorly-run dotcom startup, and your bosses are a bunch of techno-weenies who will spend thousands on the latest gadgets despite the fact that they know nothing about them and they're not even remotely relevant to the business. They will also occassionally forget to pay you, and completely fail to understand why you get upset about this because, hey, look at this new thing you get to play with. They'll go bankrupt about 6 months after they hire you."

(Actually, IIRC they lasted about two and half years before going under, and the company that bought them out did make good on employee back pay.)

Original: "The right candidate will find this a fullfilling position where superior achievements are generously rewarded."
Translation: "You must be a mindless cog so broken by sh1t pay, almost non-existent benefits, and soul-crushing policies that you won't object when you realize that your only 'reward' for your almost herculean efforts to keep up with the workload is a monthly Silly Shirt Day and occasional box of Krispy Kremes."

Original: "You'll have the added benefit of working in an unconventional and relaxed corporate culture."
Translation: "Well, yeah, our pay scale and benefits are, like, the lowest in the industry, and we have a lot of the stuff listed above; but we think you'll ignore that when you see that we're chill enough to actually hire people with facial piercings and tattoos, your supervisor is the best source in the city for really good pot and acid, we have lots of kicka$$ parties where everyone gets completely sh1t-faced, and our employee street-hockey team has gone undefeated against our rival corps for the last 3 years. Plus, that really hot bisexual punk chick in Financial will boff your brains out in the mailroom after work (seriously, she might even bring her girlfriend). It's, like, a totally bitchin' place to work, dude."

(Actually, it wasn't in the mailroom, it was at her place, and her girlfriend was a dumpy b1tch-queen; but this is pretty much where I work now. Though that supervisor doesn't work here anymore, so i have to find a new dealer.)

 

[Skeptic]

What worries me is not so much that the job terms try to hide the crappy nature of the job, but that the terms used to do so seem to mean nothing at all.

For example, "goal oriented". As opposed to what? People who are oriented during nothing in particular? And isn't every job, by definition, "goal oriented"--your goal is to do X, so you are oriented to do it?

 

[drkitten]

What worries me is not so much that the job terms try to hide the crappy nature of the job, but that the terms used to do so seem to mean nothing at all.

That's because buzzwords get watered down with overuse. There's even a term that linguists use to describe this phenomenon -- "semantic bleaching."

For example, "goal oriented". As opposed to what?

Typically, "goal-oriented" is -- or was -- opposed to "process-oriented."

For example, suppose I'm running a store of some sort, and someone phones in an order for a thousand widgets -- but I've only got 997 in stock. There's presumably a re-order process detailed somewhere in the franchise's three-ring binder that I can use to get a case of widgets sometime next week, but my goal is to fill the order, even if it means cutting a few corners in the process. So I might actually nip in to my competition, buy three of the same model widget (at retail price, if necessary), and use those to fill out the mass order. I can sort the paperwork out later.

Of course, this kind of initiative isn't necessarily a good thing for an employee to show. A lot of times, the process as laid down in the three-ring binder is actually an important part of the business plan, and violating the process too grossly or too often can seriously hamper the business's profitability, or even open you up to massive lawsuits of some sort. So the question is whether you want the kind of employees who are willing to say "sod the procedure, let's get something done here," on their own initiative and authority.

Implicit in this is also the notion that "goal-oriented" implies a certain degree of awareness of (and respect for) the Big Picture. For example, if you are a security guard at a hospital, the "goal" of the hospital is to heal sick people -- and you should recognize that you are rather incidental to that. For example, if someone flies in Dr. H. M. Bigshot-Surgeon to do some sort of specialized and time-sensitive surgery, making him wait for twenty minutes while HR prints his badge, before you let him in the building to review the X-rays, may not be in the best interests of the patient and the hospital as a whole.

I've dealt with these kinds of people before -- in particular, I remember one consulting gig I was offered, long ago, where the Large Company was going to fly me across the world to go do something important -- so important, and so time-sensitive, I was going to have to miss my final exams that term in graduate school. Unfortunately, the Large Company wasn't able to issue me a plane ticket, since they couldn't process the paperwork fast enough (and the same group of paper shufflers forbade me from buying my own). I wasn't able to get to the job site, and the project crashed and burned. Not a "goal-oriented" group at all.

 

[luchog]

Typically, "goal-oriented" is -- or was -- opposed to "process-oriented."

A very good illustration of the terms.

In my time in the US military, I noticed that dichotomy was quite pronounced; and emphasis could change dramatically with circumstances. A peacetime Army tended to be extremely process-oriented, to the point where there were often times when absolutely nothing got done, because someone, somewhere along the seemingly-endless chain of paper pushers neglected to dot a certain 'i' or cross a certain 't'. In a wartime Army, however, a lot of that process just gets chucked out the window; and the prevailing attitude is more along the lines of "Just do what we need to do to get things working now; and we'll sort out the paperwork after we've taken the hill."

 

[drkitten]

A very good illustration of the terms.

In my time in the US military, I noticed that dichotomy was quite pronounced;

Yes, a good example indeed. I might even be able to simplify it somewhat.

A "process-oriented" lieutenant wants you to salute him, because military discipline must be preserved.

A "goal-oriented" lieutenant doesn't want you to salute him, because it draws attention from the snipers.