Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

throwpoaster

I am shocked. Shocked! This is shocking /s

masfuerte

In summary, employees who are impressed by corporate bullshit do badly on tests of analytic intelligence. This is very unsurprising.

oytis

Happy to see that the term "bullshit" has established itself in the scientific literature.

ericmay

“Might be bad at their jobs” was a very corporate speak way of saying they might be dumb. In case you missed that and were impressed by the bullshit language used. ;-)

reedf1

There is a grotesquely pulsing layer of overconfident dumbasses in business (and society in general) and this is the language they speak. My job at any company, as far as I can see it, is to make sure my local orbit is cleared of these wackos. They are parasitic extractors of value and soul.

Traster

Isn't this just the obvious conclusion you would expect going in? Corporate bullshit is meant to sound impressive whilst simultaneously either saying nothing, or hiding the real meaning. Synergy is a great example - what the person saying it hopes you understand is that Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros have a complimentary set of skills that when put together will be more profitable. What they actually mean is that when we merge these two companies we're going to have two sets of sales teams, two sets of marketing teams, two production teams, two sets of HR, accounts, back office etc. And so we're going to be more efficient because everyone I just mentioned is going to be fired. So yeah of course, the intent is to trick you and the likelihood of success is (inversely) proportional to how smart you are and it turns out if you're smart you probably also do other parts of your job well.

ekjhgkejhgk

These headlines are crack for HN.

gostsamo

Won't forget from one of the Pratchett's book, where the word "synergy" was called a whore. Don't have the english edition of Going Postal handy to find the exact quote, but it was a glorious rant against a CEO's interview in the newspaper.

VorpalWay

How was this a surprise to anyone with more than three braincells? But I guess it is good to have this study to point to in your workplace, instead of just seeing that it is self evident.

rdevilla

I suspect this is why formal languages exist; as a sieve to keep the hordes of fools at bay, and a system for turning bullshit into parse errors. We are undoing much of this progress by now insisting everything be expressed in natural language for a machine to translate on our behalf, like a tour guide. The natives will continue to speak amongst themselves in their mother tongue.

RobotToaster

To analyse the impact of this study I recommend that we set up an interdepartmental committee with fairly broad terms of reference so that at the end of the day we'll be in the position to think through the various implications and arrive at a decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived action which might well have unforeseen repercussions.

throwpoaster

The trick in corporate environments is to watch for the people who respond well to this kind of speech and avoid/eject. The people who roll their eyes at corporate nonsense are your skunkworkers.

phkahler

“Employees who are more likely to fall for corporate bullshit may help elevate the types of dysfunctional leaders who are more likely to use it, creating a sort of negative feedback loop. Technically that's a positive feedback loop, or reinforcing feedback loop. The author is probably using "negative" in to mean undesirable. Gotta get your jargon right!

andai

I found this title amusing, since I'm actually synergizing paradigms, i.e. trying to find the commonalities between different models of human behavior. (There are dozens of us!)

donohoe

Its describing every second LinkedIn post, no?

eucyclos

I thought tfa would say seeking synergy is a sign one is struggling with ones own deliverables so one tries to add value elsewhere in the organization. Is synergy really such a poorly defined term that it's synonymous with corporate bullshit?

ranyume

The intention of these phrases is to "hack" into the inner-workings of the human brain, into how people create power structures. Legalese exists for a reason. Language is not just a tool for communication but a system that defines roles for people in a power structure. The phrases "Come here, boy!" and "Could you come here for a second?" have the same function, but the structure is inverted. Same for the phrases "I simplified the function so it's read easily" and "I made an strategic decision that enables robust scalability and growth". It all boils down to authority signaling.

johnsillings

SOCIOPATHS │ SOCIOPATHS WITH MBAs │ SOCIOPATHS WHO LIKE POWERPOINT │ OVERWORKED DOERS │ CONFUSED PEOPLE │ LOSERS

kevinsync

Last time I worked corporate, we were acquired and I was asked what my job was by somebody on the other side. I said “My job is to make you feel good about whatever it is that I may or may not be doing around this place.” Despite it being a joke, I think there’s a lot of truth in there that explains corp-tongue -- from being visible in endless meetings to in-group parlance to cutthroat promotion tracks, a lot of corporate America boils down to narrative, storytelling and performance more than booking sensible profit and delivering the very best to client and user. This type of language and expression is a major tool for making people feel good about your actual, contestable value in an organization. It’s both kabuki and kayfabe lol