Well, not really but she does say more than anyone I have ever met while imparting absolutely no actual information.
She came over last night with her new boyfriend so I could meet the guy. We were talking about stuff and once again I was struck by the fact that she tells me things but no actual information is conveyed. It is odd.
We were talking about work. I am a network guy and she is a programmer. I was telling her about my recent woes (a couple outages, some hardware failures) and some cool Cisco stuff I was doing. She talked about her job for ~ 20 minutes. When she finished I still have no idea what she is doing other than it requires programming (and I know that because it is in her job title) and they use Cisco switches.
She uses a lot of buzz words but gets nothing across. Oh, and she does this with no-work related subjects as well.
My first reaction was: how old is your sister? Slipping into old fogey mode for a minute, it’s my observation that youngsters today rarely speak to convey information; they speak to establish status. But then, slipping out of old fogey mode, I realized that the vast majority of 40-somethings I work with spew enormous amounts of self-serving, say-nothing bullshit too. Usually, they’re trying to get out of doing something by loading it onto me, and they do it in such a way that they don’t give me any logical “in” to reject their off-loading. All I really know after they amble away, satisfied with their ten minutes of self-important blather, is that I’ve got the job, and they don’t.
Oh, don’t start with the “old fogey mode”; old fogeys can be the worst of all. My wife’s stepdad, for instance. All he talks about is food and cars. What’s simultaneously funny and sad, though, is that he so often says stuff that just doesn’t need to be said. He could talk your ear off for half an hour about a hamburger he ate once, at some restaurant you’ll never visit.
Just last night we were cleaning up after dinner, talking about something completely different, and he chimes in out of the blue, “I almost bought a loaf of fresh French bread.” And that was it. Okay, great, and that was almost a story, too, way to go, champ. So now we’re talking about food we didn’t eat. That’s like a whole new conversational low.
Another vote for not age-related. My father is a really great guy, but he talk for hours without saying much. It’s become sort of a joke in my family. I’ve learned to take control of my conversations with him. When I do, I get actual content.
Gee, I’ve never met your sister (I think) and I’m pretty sure I know what she does, she’s a manager. Possibly high-level, definitely has Important Superiors to kiss up to. So, spending all her working hours in “corporate-speak” to kiss up to the boss has eradicated English from her vocabulary.
Oh, yeah. Ex-coworker of mine was apparently a wizard at getting funds for all kinds of largish (several 100,000 euros and up) projects out of the local, national and European government. He could talk about his projects for hours on end without any preparation. Absolutely crammed his talk with the latest technology buzzwords to such a point that I’m pretty sure he only had the remotest grasp of their meaning, and I’ve never heard him describe a project in such a way so that I could understand what it was about. I’ve declined to work on some of his projects for that reason.
Maybe you could grab some face time and touch base with your sister. Maybe update her on the fact that her signal-to-noise ratio is pretty high, and you two lack synergy? She could break through the clutter and streamline her communication for maximum impact. I think that could be a big win for both of you.
I did have a point buried somewhere in there. I don’t know how close you two are, Sleestak, but is it possible you could just talk to her? That’s what we do in these here parts. I suggest “What’s up with all the bullshit jargon and empty buzzwords?”. Maybe she’s stuck working with people who spent the first 20 years of their lives stuck in one of those Leadership Training boot camps and it’s rubbing off on her without her noticing.
I’ve known network people who aren’t that well versed in the terminology of software development, and the other way around, so I can see how it’d be possible for her to talk about her work without you not getting much out of it. But having someone spew buzzwords while discussing everyday things is just… weird.
