I used to work with enterprise customers at a SaaS company, and still have a lot of anger in how corporate types use this fluffy language. I think my “favorite” example of this jargon is “Please Advise.”, which basically just means “What the fuck?!”

I was working at a tool checkout in my shop for a while, and the sheer amount of ignorance and repetition blew me away.

People would come in, see signs stating things like “Don’t throw your hazardous waste in this trash can!”, and people would straight up ignore it. Things got so bad that we had to stop offering a trash can in our part of the shop.

A lot of people would also just repeat the same statements, day after day, week after week. For example, we have iPads that contain maintenance manuals. We have to update those manuals every week, on the same day. Without fail, the same people always forget which day Update Day is, and have to ask.

The worst ones happen when people come to turn in their gear before end of shift. Most people are fine, but every toolbox has to be thoroughly inspected before being scanned back in. Often, somebody misplaced a tool, left garbage in the box somewhere, or there’s some other undocumented discrepancy.

Most people are cool about it, and willing to make things right. But, some people act like you’ve purposely screwed them over, or react with total apathy and disrespect. I don’t make the rules, man, I’m just trying to do my job.

While I think shareholders can be a driving factor, I see it way more often with VC-funded companies. The “2.5x year over year” growth mantra that places like YCombinator stipulate have disastrous effects on small tech companies. Often, these startups have an incentive to keep taking additional funding rounds, which appears to tighten the grip the VC has over them.

Try growing the next Microsoft or Google or Amazon out of that model. I’m not convinced that it’s possible. At least if you bootstrap your own company, you don’t have the same binding obligations…even if it takes way longer to get to a place that’s self-sustaining.