Ballmer Peak
Discovered by Microsoft in the late 80's, somehow a blood alcohol content between 0.129% and 0.138% confers superhuman programming ability.
Alice: "The Ballmer Peak is a delicate effect requiring careful calibration. You can't just give a team of coders a year's supply of whiskey and tell them to get cracking. Bob: "Has that ever happened?" Alice: "Remember Windows ME?"
hunterlane over 9 years agoVanity Metrics
Useless data that looks good but does not necessarily correlate real success.
Bob: Our website gets a million views daily!
Mark: How many of them are you converting to paid users?
Bob: Well.. we are still working on that.
serge over 9 years ago
Big Company Utopia
Refers to the type of environment that big companies such as Facebook and Google create for their employees. This includes free dinner and lunch, mini fridges filled with $8 a bottle cold pressed juices, organic everything, shuttles to and from work and even mobile hair salons waiting for you outside in the parking lot. Meanwhile a small startup might get a water fountain that will work half the time.
Tiffany: I heard Facebook stocks their fridge with kombucha. What the hell. I want that. I don't even get paid as much.
zazpowered over 9 years agoThree Commas Club
Three commas to imply a billion dollars as $1,000,000,000 has 3 commas. To be in the three commas club is to be a billionaire.
Richard’s literalness remains the one thing to rattle Russ. “You know what has three commas in it, Richard?” “A sentence with two appositive phrases in it?”
arunaharsa over 9 years agoBus Factor
The number of people that need to be hit by a bus before their project is dead.
"Our engineers work in teams of 10 for the higher bus factor"
asdf over 9 years agoIt is well known that engineers make a "SPOF" sound when hit by a bus.
MBA
Certification that you've read case studies on how others have succeeded.
Steve: Have you started your business yet?
Jeremey: No I'm getting my MBA. I'll start my first business when I'm 30 and have a wife and kids.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoBut I actually want to get an MBA
@zazpowered :)
@zazpowered You may want to interview friends who earned their MBAs.
Lean Startup
A startup philosophy that attempts to combine the aspects of product driven with customer driven resulting in often successful, and simultaneously mediocre apps and websites that fails to bring forth truly disruptive technology.
Bob: I've spent all day doing customer development surveys for my Uber for tutoring app. Alice: That's nice. I just finished some testing for my needle-free vaccine delivery system. Bob: [Walks away feeling sorry for Alice, who has no clue what his customers really want and won't be able to pivot after sinking such large R&D costs]
Mcat over 9 years agoNomophobia
The irrational and all-consuming fear of being out of cell phone contact.
Coined by British researchers. An abbreviation of no-mobile-phone-phobia.
"I left my phone at home this morning and I feel like I've lost a limb. I'm suffering from severe nomophobia." "When my battery hits 5% I get jittery. I must be suffering from nomophobia."
doctornomo over 9 years agoESports
Video game players attempt to turn DOTA, LoL, Counter Strike, and other popular video games into a sport lost in a twilight dream that one day they can be paid large sums of money to validate their laziness.
I didn't go to a single class this semester because my friends and I are dropping out to start a Goat Simulator ESports team.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoReverse Communism
When money is taken from venture capitalists and other wealthy types, and given to coders. Profitability is a vague thing that will happen sometime in the distant future (maybe).
In 1991 communism was defeated, only four years later, the spectre of Reverse Communism haunted the SF bay area from 1995 until the spring of 2001.
FuctCo5K over 9 years agoDoes anyone make money around here?
Users of venture backed startups and residents of Silicon Valley ask this question frequently. They do not understand how a lot of social apps such as Snapchat and Facebook (before they started to run ads) are able to raise so much money at sky high valuations without generating revenue.
For on demand services such as Uber, Instacart and Caviar they do not understand how signup credit, promo codes and referral credit can be offered so frequently.
Jim: Let me get this straight. Snapchat is worth $10 billion now and they haven't made any money? Just now I read Uber is offering $100 signup credit, $50 credit for every friend I refer and a one time promo code of $20 off of my first ride. Does anyone make money around here? Tim: You realize Uber has raised $1 billion dollars every month for the past 12 months right?
zazpowered over 9 years agoVaporware
A piece of nothing. Generally used to describe something that is inexistent. "The snake oil of tech".
John: he got the investment without a product?
Andrew: he sold them total vaporware dude, he's not even sure what he's gonna build
Cloudhamza over 9 years agoBing It
An expression created by a marketing team within Microsoft that hypothesized that people would say this over the more commonly used expression "Google it."
Microsoft Marketing Rep: I want you to figure out Google's market share.
Bing Product Engineer: Sure one sec let me Google it.
Microsoft Marketing Rep: NO! Bing it!
Bing Product Engineer: Oh right, I forgot.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoNon-technical Cofounder
A Wharton MBA who will overestimate the value of his idea and underestimate the value of the person who will implement it. Often wonders why his technical cofounders leave him and the apps they build look like shit and get hacked all the time.
Non-technical Cofounder: Why do all these technical cofounders leave me? Did they not see the MBA from Wharton in my email? I'm telling you right now, I know how to write a business plan. I even offered the last guy 10% of my company.
zazpowered over 9 years agoWorked with a guy just like this before. We had tons of competition doing the exact same thing but dude refused to change his ideas or strategy at all. Happy it was contract work.
Also known as "Ideas Guy"
As opposed to a technical cofounder that shaves yaks because they have no clue about business?
Popular phrase: "Looking for a technical co-founder"
Swift
Swift is a multi-paradigm, compiled programming language created by Apple Inc. It is also the last name of a famous American pop star.
Zeeshan: Your resume says you have 10 years of Swift experience.
Intern Applicant: Yes sir.
Zeeshan: You do realize it hasn't been around for that long...
Intern Applicant: Sorry sir I was trying to look cool.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoNo Free Lunch
An expression known all to well to employees at Apple Inc, who are required to pay for their own lunch.
Back at Google we'd get free food during all times of day, but here at Apple it comes out of my salary because there's no free lunch.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoThe Anti Drug Test Node
An employee who mostly does his assignments and work under the influence quite often, but is so valuable to the company that the managers go through any length to prevent drug tests from being conducted on that individual or department.
We never have drug tests here in the engineering department because of all the anti-drug test nodes in the office. If we did we'd have to fire half the people who've designed our system architecture.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoMaking the world a better place
Solving a very specific problem that loosely translates into a social benefit.
We are making the world a better place through P2P iBeacon messaging platforms.
dennis over 9 years agoLook at how much time sink we've created for evil people... with Reddit.
Buying the logo
Investors putting a tiny percentage of a fund into a company so they can claim credit. Credit to Sam Altman
Due to the success of Airbnb, some investors are buying the logo so they can put an Airbnb badge on their website.
zazpowered over 9 years agoRide Sharing Tension
The tension a user of Uber Pool or Lyft Line feels when they feel obligated to make small talk with other passengers.
"Shit he's right next to me. Do I need to talk to him? It's already been 5 minutes since he got into the car though. Dammit I'm using regular Uber next time."
zazpowered over 9 years ago
Topchart vanity metrics list http://www.topchart.io/lists/vanity-metrics