I’ll Get Back to You by EOD
Over the summer, I was introduced to a YouTube video by Nicholas T. who created a skit called What Meetings Sound Like to Interns. After working a summer in the corporate world and watching this video an embarrassing number of times (I know, my humor is basic), I realized that this skit is really a true reflection of a corporate job. After coming back to school and reverting back to my original colloquial language, I decided to circle back to it and dissect what Nicholas had to say. Follow along to the video with this link and please make sure to laugh.
0:55 “...while cascading relevant information to cross-functional teams and stakeholders…”
Generally speaking, cascading means falling or pouring. The corporate equivalent is actually not too far off. But in this case, we are just looking to pass pertinent information to the appropriate people.
1:00 “...just make sure you get your geese in a row, so we can hit the ground running…”
This would usually be said as get your ducks in a row. The phrase’s origin comes from the game of pool when the balls are arranged in such a way that they are guaranteed to go in one after the other. Corporations use this terminology to express the need to get organized before beginning a task, making sure that everything is properly prepared.
1:11 “...some of the best practices for scripting down JavaScript into Java…”
Honestly, I don’t know what this means, but I think this is probably what engineers do.
1:13 “...touch base with him and see if we can leverage what’s in our wheelhouse to get this shipped…”
This part is so corporate. Touch base is just reaching out. Leverage is to take advantage of. And wheelhouse refers to strengths. The term wheelhouse came from baseball announcers back in the 1900s; I wonder what the thought process was behind this.
1:24 “...my bandwidth is pretty limited this week…”
For all of us comp sci nerds, limited bandwidth, in this instance, does not refer to data transmission. Here, it means how much time or capabilities one has to focus on something.
1:32 “...so let’s timebox that and let it marinate, so we can circle back to it later…”
Again, this is so corporate! Timeboxing is when you set aside a period of time to complete a certain task. Marinating is allowing time for ideas to be more deeply assessed at another time. So basically the obvious cooking definition but with ideas. And of course, the classic circling back which just means coming back to an idea later. Honestly, from personal experience, I had never heard the word marinating used seriously in the corporate world before, but trust me – it is unfortunately much more common than you would think.
1:39 “...peel back the onion on this…”
I have also never heard this phrase actually being used in a meeting, but in case you ever find yourself in this stinky little situation, it just means to analyze something.
2:05 “...the abstraction of the paradigm shift…”
A.K.A. the smart way of saying “a big change”. The term originates from the philosophy of science, and now we use it to make ourselves sound more intelligent when we are talking about switching from Teams to Slack.
2:38 “...to move the needle forward…”
Moving the needle talks about making noticeable changes in a task, kind of like when a scale has enough added weight to make a difference in the heaviness reading.
2:54 “...let’s put a pin in that for now, and we can take this offline. I’ll circle back to it by EOD, but let’s just make it an action item for now…”
Pin in that: talk about it later. Offline: talk about it privately. Circle back to it by EOD: come back to it by the end of the day. You get the idea– so corporate!
3:08 “...to give you a single source of truth perspective…”
The phrase single source of truth perspective is often referred to as SSOT. It is when different platforms, systems, products, etc., all come together into one idea or place for better organization, or to get your geese in a row.
I hope this cleared up any confusion and increased your core competency in understanding corporate speak. Now you can tee it up before taking that corporate internship and be prepared to use an excessive amount of words to say barely anything. If needed, don’t hesitate to reach out, I promise to not be out of pocket. I’ll get back to you by EOD.
Gargi Ramekar