BUZZ PHRASES THAT DESERVE THE DUST BIN
By Peter Delevett

Mercury News
April 2, 2002
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/2986636.htm>



Last month, I asked readers to pick the most annoying buzz phrase in vogue
in Silicon Valley. For starters, I suggested "at the end of the day" -- a
bit of nonsense favored by tech investors to say things like, "At the end
of the day, we decided selling pet food online was a really stupid idea."

Readers weren't shy about sharing the phrases they wish would buzz off:

"I am getting SO tired of hearing '24/7' all over the place. Why don't we
all go back and speak in complete sentences again?" -- Jane P.

"'First and foremost.' It's redundant and repetitive." -- Dennis M.

"'Think outside the box.' We are sick of that phrase." -- Michele and George

"'Tin-cupping.' As in, 'I tin-cupped a number of departments so we could
pull enough money together to run a companywide program.'" -- Gary S.

"'Productize,' 'monetize,' or any other terms that venture capitalists
use." -- Adwait U.

"'The reality is,' because it denotes any other view or opinion as a
fantasy." -- Gary A.

"'I don't disagree.' I first started hearing this phrase at a dysfunctional
dot-com. It's weasel talk. The person is leaving themselves an out, so they
can later recall that they didn't agree with what you said." -- David P.

"Think Different." -- an anonymous Apple Computer employee.

"'Net-net,' as in,"The net-net is that the model for selling pet food
online was effective."The 'net' of something is the end result, so net-net
really makes no sense." -- Doug W.

"'Leverage,' as in, Pets.com didn't leverage the online pet food sales
model well." -- Doug W., voting a second time. (Bad Doug.)

"'Go-to-market strategy.' Wouldn't it be better to have a strategy that
includes what happens AFTER you get to the market?" -- Bruce K.

"Shift the paradigm." -- Michael P.

"'Grow the business.' Grow is an intransitive verb; such verbs never take a
direct object, therefore, you cannot 'grow' a business." -- Nancie G.

"I'm tired of everything and everybody in the tech world being called a
'solution.'" -- Neil

Then there is Scott W., who's irked by so many buzzwords that he couldn't
pick just one: "'Having said that' . . . 'take it to the next level' . . .
'best of breed' . . . 'proactive' . . . 'agile' . . . 'going forward.'"

You hope the guy doesn't bust a gasket.