Eschew Obfuscation!

Ok so what is it with IT really? I admit I’m the last member of the non tech savvy species left on this planet, the sole surviving being for who anything beyond the basics is confounding…so sue me! Really makes me wonder if anyone speaks regular English anymore. Gone are the days when you asked a question and got a straightforward answer. All you get now are IT dudes strutting around using their own brand of lingo like some sort of alien language for higher beings. Making poor souls like me feel like we need to go back to school and get a refund. I don’t know what a widget is and I don’t know what it does. Its sound like an icky insect one would squash under ones feet but I’m guessing that’s not the correct interpretation of the word.

Similarly, the server to me represents some box somewhere which keeps crashing and having these subtle effects on my entire life. It’s like a cranky,unfriendly cat…only with more lives. And you can blame anything on the server…I mean it, anything. Why didn’t we send our proposal – the server crashed. Why didn’t we complete our reports – the server crashed. Why didn’t you send the mail you were supposed to – the server crashed. Why are you taking 3 hour lunch breaks – the server crashed! And no – I don’t understand acronyms either! SOA, SSID, RUP, OLAP, NTFS, FDSG, YTEWTY, VBCNB, OPJO (I made up a few of those last ones incidentally, my fingers seemed to have a life of their own– but I’m sure ye IT Gods can ascribe meanings to these newbies) are like the word unscramble game in the morning newspaper.

Sure we management types use jargon too. But there’s nothing awe-inspiring about paradigm shifts, core competencies, SWOT, brainstorming, 360 degree feedback and the like anymore. Kids learn them in in nursery these days. Movie stars use them in movies. All of us use them everyday…like yesterday…when I did a SWOT on whether dinner was going to be from McDonalds or from Dominos. So easy and helpful in making life's decisions. Let’s see a widget doing all that.