The mystical location on websites where advertisers want their ads to appear. Originally referred to physical newspapers, which folded in half and made money from advertising. Today, newspapers don’t have advertisers and just fold.

The process of converting a promising team or great product into lifeless corporate mulch by means of a liberal application of cash and false promises.

Made by pretentious amateurs.

Imbue with the power and intelligence of meat.

The least crappy of a purposely skewed sample.

Craven groupthink, or just a convenient way to avoid critial thinking.

Lazy, self-indulgent speculation passed off as “boundless creativity”.

Toss out random ideas in order to compensate for a lack of strategy, direction, or adequate information.

A form of niche porn for brand managers in which a product or service connects to (or brandgages) a consumer via a variety of “touchpoints”. It is rumored that David Lynch got his start in films as a brandgageur.

Item deA portmanteau of “programmer” and “dickhead.”

An inflamed economic blister filled with hype instead of pus. Very toxic when it bursts.

Share information by peeing down the org chart.

A colleague who feels very smug for rearranging your desk when you’re too busy working to notice.

Undifferentiated sludge generated to spackle over irritating business problems. Often comes in buckets.

The one thing we haven’t managed to fuck up as a business

Based on facts or evidence, rather than on magic-gut divination.

Steal from as many people as possible simultaneously.

Produced by assailing a lack of insight with a barrage of numbers.

The sufficiency of an open sewer to power a rich man’s windmill.

A flat surface that provides cover for a deep repository of shallow thinking. Presentation or slides.

Pull your hand out of the cage while you still have fingers left.

To smack someone on the head twice in rapid succession.

A particularly smug sub-species of guinea pig.

An interconnected web of stuff you don’t understand or control.

Trying, as in trying to destroy the English language.

Assign a menial or unpleasant responsibility to someone, particularly to a low-status individual or group.

Desperately grasp for scraps of someone’s attention, often by means of a wholly fantastical and doomed scheme.

Common misspelling of “existing”, particularly in press releases and company-wide announcements.

To conceive a novel, astonishing, or unprecedented way to profit from the labor of others.

Insiders Profit Outrageously

Extracting critical information from veteran employees before you lay them off for being too expensive. See also: training data.

Use or take advantage of an asset, tool, or technology that doesn’t exist or that the speaker doesn’t understand.

Unpopular products

testicles

A system that rewards individuals according to their merit, where “merit” is the degree to which they physically resemble or have connections to those already in power.

Designed to be used while pooping.

Parasites can mimic their host’s natural prey, gaining a pathway into the host when consumed. Leucochloridium, a genus of flatworm, matures in the digestive system of songbirds. Their eggs pass in the bird’s feces, which are eaten by snails. Since songbirds do not eat snails, the sporocyst-sac evolved to pulsate brightly in the snail’s eye stalk, attracting hungry songbirds and completing the cycle.

Very similar to waterboarding, but with new employees and Kool-Aid.

Assigned responsibility for something you actually have no control over, making you the captain of the USS Scapegoat.

Hairstyle and choice of coffee.

Chase the same rabbit down a different hole in search of its pot of gold.

The member of a project team who is specifically designated to ignore your email.

A celebratory gathering held by many Native American and First Nations communities.

If you’re a white person having a meeting, there’s a word for that. It’s meeting.

Archaic. The state of being hidden from the view of others.

Sell an idea you developed for one client to as many others as possible with no additional work. Also, turn a half-baked technology into a product by virtue of some marketing materials.

The appearance of quick, substantive progress at the expense of longer-term goals.

Contact, as though from under the bed or behind a tree in a dark forest, extending a small moist hand.

A device, system, or business process with an enhanced ability to f**k you when it breaks or fails to work.

Sufficient fanfare about working with another company to obscure a portion of the incompetence or malfeasance of each.

A fancy vacation planned among a group of friends who think highly of themselves, with an associated tax deduction.

Someone who believes, or of whom it is believed, that uttering platitudes passes for work.

Insert a portion of your precious dwindling lifetime into a wee, pre-measured coffin.

The central, most important lie you tell your customers about your product.

the last time the commercial internet was useful