Short for "Long On Promises, Short On Delivery".
A product with a lot of hype and not living to its created expectations upon shipment.
"They're too LOPSOD."
That co-worker who doesn’t really know the job, but pretends to by just slapping together everyone else’s contributions.
Illustration of a Wikipedia Kid (from “The IT Crowd”):
Mr Reynholm (the big boss): Jen, did I just see you googling “IT manager”?
Jen (the IT manager): Um…
The smooth-talking member of the marketing department who signs up users by promising that the next version of the product will have features which are unplanned, extremely difficult to implement, and/or in violation of the laws of physics. By Thursday.
Dave: Did you see that Tom promised the client that end-to-end encryption would be in the next release?!
Larry: But we don't control the user's operating system - how is that even possible?
Steve: Somebody better give that marketroid a crash course in reality.
Someone who will click on any link they are sent, often happily entering their banking passwords as well.
Dave: So how do we leverage our mailing database to drive adoption?
Larry: We could email them an invitation link.
Steve: That will get the lemming clickers, but the majority won't click through.
A suit-wearing, cubicle inhabiting minion who is one of thousands of identical minions hired to write banking systems or payroll packages in RPG and other unspeakable horrors. See BFI operator.
Dave: Hey, my friend Tom over in Seattle said he's been working 6 years on the same reporting module but never seen the whole project.
Larry: Let's take a minute's silence for all the code grinders out there.
(brief 5-second pause)
Larry: Ok, enough of that, let's get to the boardroom - they've got macarons from Tout Sweet.
Brute Force and Ignorance. A BFI operator is someone (usually in a corporate software development environment) who uses set policies and methodologies fanatically while studiously avoiding any rational thought. BFI operators do not last long in the Valley.
Dave: Did you see how Tom re-instantiates the same class each time he uses it, rather than referencing it? A total BFI operator!
Larry: That's how he used to do it at Redmond.
Steve: What's he doing in the Valley?
A genre of of Medium articles aiming to simultaneously enrich the readers lives and indirectly boost a first-time writers confidence and popularity.
They can range from articles on how to have better relationships with the people around them to how to handle startup stress. Normally everything is anecdotal and nothing is really verifiable.
Zeeshan: Check out my new medium article, "How to Passion Your Way to Success."
Matt: That title...what does it even mean? 50 retweets already?
Zeeshan: Nobody knows what it means. But it's provocative!
Matt: What...
Zeeshan: It gets the people going.
The constant need for tech industry employees to keep interviewing (and often switching jobs). Just because everyone else around are switching, or starting their own companies, people in valley keep on interviewing to chase their "passion". Thanks for the inundation of requests from LinkedIn recruiters!
"Did you hear Sam joined Hooli! I heard he had competing offers from Pied Piper and Aviato also!"
"Didn't he start working with Endframe only last year?"
"Valley Anxiety man!!"
Giving preference to job candidates based on having unusual non-job-related characteristics - with the goal of collecting one of each kind to your team. Based on the collectible toy with the theme "Gotta Catch 'Em All".
Yuliya: Hey look, a resume from a Bulgarian engineer who speaks Urdu and plays the ukelele in her spare time. Andy: Wow, serious Pokemon points there.
When someone invites you to have an informal one on one meeting with them, with the implicit understanding that they are trying to recruit you to his or her company. This almost always done when someone is working at another company.
This is my poaching strategy, George: When we're at lunch, I'll be super friendly to the person I'm inviting. We won't even TALK about work for the first 20 minutes. If my work comes up I'll tell them how awesome everything's going and how we're growing at an absurd rate. Then I'll ease into the conversation asking how work is going at their company. As SOON as they start to say something negative about their current working experience I'll ask them more about it and sympathize with them. I'd tell them that we'd love to have them on our team and after that I'll offer to pay the bill. Finally, I'll invite them to my office, "just to check it out." From there 95% of the work is done and we just start talking about dates they could possibly join in. It's all casual though. If they want to move, this is the opportunity they'll normally seize.
Modifying a free site or service to make money, usually after building a user base.
"Hey, our users love the cat pictures. Now that we have them hooked, let's talk monetization."
"Great, how about we insert a bunch of annoying pop-up video ads?"
An individual so utterly loyal to a particular operating system or platform that they have achieved a state of religious zeal. Microserfs typically drool in response to a rigged demo.
Dave: How did it go over at the DMV, are they interested?
Larry: No good, their guy Tom says they don't "believe" in Open Source. Says they want us to do it in Silverlight.
Steve: They're all a bunch of microserfs over there!
An almost laughable form of advertising in which a person or company pretends to be an attractive girl or guy on Tinder. After getting alot of matches, they'll send links to the person they matched with usually after the other person has worked up the courage to hit on them and ask them out.
George: Damn girl you're so damn fine. I wanna take you in my Prius and drive you up and down the Bay Bridge.
Bait and Switcher: I like you too George.
George: Fuck Tinder is awesome, I want to meetup Julie.
Bait and Switcher: You should check out my site. I sell protien powder that makes you have big gainz xxxprotienpwderxxxpowdr.com
George: Uh...
The lights are blinkenflashen but nobody’s home. This is usually applied to a vacant person who has no clue, with no clue that they have no clue. Named after a server response code issued when you try to visit a webpage that simply isn’t there.
Did you see Tom's last tweet? He clearly thinks UX stands for Undeniable Expert. What a 404!
A technology that's so new, you can count on it to be unreliable and troublesome (derived from the term "leading edge").
"Did our database crash again?"
"Yeah, this new big data graph mapping software is totally bleeding edge."
CTR which stands for click through rate is the ratio between clicks and impressions. It is a commonly used term in online advertising and email campaigns as a way to measure effectiveness.
Dan placed a small banner ad on his website that received 5 clicks in 100 page views for a CTR of 5%. After making the banner ad full screen his CTR increased to 100% but nobody returned to the site.
I've had this problem with mobile apps. I spam ads, but nobody comes back.
@SingleCommaClub where do you think i got it from
The hipster data scientist's new topic of discussion. “Big Data” has become a meaningless cliché, so much so that complaining about Big Data being a cliché is also a cliché.
PM: Can you look at this set of big data? It is 200GB.
Data scientist: That is actually only medium data according to yourdatafitsinram.github.io
I need to start using this
@zazpowered haha yeah
A mythical University on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada where many good Engineers and Computer Scientists come from.
Jake: That new hire is really writing some beautiful code.
Pablo: He went to UVic. It's that laid back island vibe.
I have noticed some engineers from there. Not as common as waterloo though for sure
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
for any readers wondering http://svdictionary.com/words/waterloo
A/B testing is when you test two variants of something A and B to determine which one maximizes the outcome you want. It is commonly used in web design.
After doing some A/B testing, Buzzfeed determined that the headline "You'll never believe what happened next" had a 50% higher click through rate than the headline "The cat ran across the lawn" so that's what they used.
This happens all the time!