It may just be me but I thought the term also implied a degree of audacity or chutzpah: trying to “sell” the idea by making it seem like everyone already supports it.
Was that what old-time call boxes were accessing?
Related to the WW1 usage “the balloon’s gone up”, meaning [the attack] is about to begin (I know people who use a North of England version - “Eyup, t’whistle’s went”)
I think job postings and resume copy should be considered a subset of the whole corporate jargon / bullshit thing.
There is a whole world of crap to suffer through reading either of those. Services like Indeed now offer to have their AI write your posting (and I assume resume) of course. A perfect landing for what I consider use of the current state of popular AI.
I make sure to write our own postings. I appreciate resumes that are simple and honest. Resumes padded with the typical fluff gey tossed before the second paragraph.
Oh yes. “Passionate” - about filing invoices? A likely story…
I understood “the loop” to be more of a teletype kind of thing.
This is well-observed, and reflects my experience with a large corporation.
Ran into one described to me. It was about a presentation, a powerpoint slodeshow. The speaker started talking about the “horizontals”. The what? The bullet points.
Their tables now have verticals and horizontals instead of columns and rows.
IMO, that’s actually an improvement over columns and rows. Over portraits and landscapes to boot. I mean, beside the fact that nobody would know what the hell you are talking about…
I still say “ranks and files.”
I haven’t found a reference to being “in the loop” in the sense of “keeping informed” any earlier than 1976 (concerning the Joint Chiefs of staff), and the article explained what it meant, so I don’t how common it was before then.
Seriously . . . there seems to be a proliferation of vomitous, corporate, jargonistic nonsense in my current industry’s LinkedIn pages that just blows my frakkin’ mind .. . For example:
“I’m excited to leverage my next-generation capabilities to optimize mission-critical deliverables across multi-domain operational environments spanning air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace. My synergistic approach enables my collaborators to right-size our human capital while maximizing stakeholder value through innovative solutions that enhance warfighter lethality and survivability across the full spectrum of operations. By utilizing agile methodologies and best-in-class technologies, I position teams to deliver transformational outcomes that provide overmatch capabilities against near-peer adversaries in contested, degraded, and operationally limited environments. My proven experience in integrated C4ISR architecture provides end-to-end situational awareness and actionable intelligence to support decision-making processes from the tactical edge to strategic command centers. I remain committed to driving operational excellence through continuous improvement initiatives that align with joint all-domain command and control objectives while maintaining information dominance in the electromagnetic spectrum. Moving forward, I’ll enable teams to continue to ideate scalable solutions that demonstrate value proposition across kinetic and non-kinetic effects in multi-threat environments. I have led cross-functional teams that are still dedicated to pursuing win-win partnerships and creating sustainable competitive advantages in anti-access/area-denial scenarios while ensuring interoperability with allied force structures. My holistic approach ensures maintenance of a position as a trusted mission partner while delivering superior force multiplication effects for our joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational stakeholders.”
This reminds me that I need to really update my LinkedIn page, which is already decidedly non-jingoistic, to something much simpler, to just say, “I have experience in getting your dangerous sh%t done.”
Tripler
“I appraise antiques.”
Getting dangerous shit done sounds very jingoistic to me.
Your LinkedIn cite/quote is exactly what we all get when HR’s all over every industry use an automated buzzword filter to filter out resumes lacking certain buzzwords. The problem for the applicant is they don’t know which buzzwords any particular employer considers “need to have”. So they must just dump them all in there.
Which Heinlein novel contained a passage where people were analyzing the text of a proposed treaty and determined that stripped of jargon and high-sounding phrases, at bottom it was guaranteeing exactly nothing?
Oh God, I still wince when I remember my having to compose résumés when seeking work. There was no way to disguise my lackluster work history and for me résumé writing was an exercise in putting lipstick on a pig.
I stand corrected. I alway understood it to be straight outta Madison Avenue.
Tripler
Currently dangerous with memoranda and PowerPoint.
That reads like someone took the JSF verbage and personalized it as them doing it.
Really, why is this still in FQ?
It was. Teletypes originally used a communications protocol called 20 mA current loop which carried over into computer connections when Teletypes began to be used as computer terminals, and it predated RS232. I’m old enough to have used computers with ASR-33 Teletype consoles connected via 20 mA current loop Molex connectors.
However, I really doubt this had anything to do with the “in the loop” metaphor which more likely arose naturally from the idea of back and forth communication among staffers and up to senior management and back down again. If you were invited to meetings and copied on correspondence as an issue was being discussed, you were “in the loop” of ongoing exchanges; if you weren’t, you were “out of the loop”.
Anyway, I don’t consider this to be corporate jargon, bur rather, a natural metaphor. Real corporate jargon is pretentious bullshit that often serves no other purpose than to establish the dominance of a self-selected in-group.