Tech Terms

Tech Terms

by David Barth, written May 16, 2008
From a 2006 issue of Wired.

This is a list of essential New Words for 2006 for the workplace vocabulary:

• BLAMESTORMING

  Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

• SEAGULL MANAGER

  A manager/director, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything and then leaves.

• ASSMOSIS

  The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.

• SALMON DAY

  The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

• CUBE FARM

  An office filled with cubicles.

• PRAIRIE DOGGING

  When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

• MOUSE POTATO

  The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

• SITCOMS

  Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children & one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.

• PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE

  The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

• ADMINISPHERE

  The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

• 404

  Someone who's clueless. (How most of us feel when we reach that error message via the internet).

• OHNOSECOND (not to be confused with nanosecond)

  That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.

• WOOFIES

  Well Off Older Folks (used to be called yuppies back in 2005).

• CROP DUSTING

  Surreptitiously passing wind while walking through a Cube Farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust--leads to PRAIRIE DOGGING.