SME
Subject Matter Expert. The one person who knows how it works and is always on vacation.
"We need the SME, who is, of course, unreachable until next month."
SME
Small or Medium Enterprise. Big enough to have meetings, small enough to feel them.
"We sell to the SME market, which means everyone is overworked, including us."
EOW
End Of Week. A deadline that quietly slides into Monday.
"I will have it by EOW, which is now a flexible concept."
COB
Close Of Business. A time that depends entirely on whose business and which timezone.
"Need this by COB, but COB where, exactly."
NDA
Non-Disclosure Agreement. The reason I cannot tell you why I am laughing.
"I signed an NDA so dense it had an NDA inside it."
POC
Proof Of Concept. A demo built overnight that leadership treats as a finished product.
"The POC worked once on my laptop, so naturally they sold it."
Bandwidth
The mental capacity you do not have for the thing you are being assigned.
"I do not have the bandwidth, said the person with seven open tabs of panic."
Bandwidth
A unit of busyness measured entirely by how unwilling you are to help.
"He suddenly had no bandwidth the second the favor appeared."
Pivot
Founder for the first idea did not work, please keep funding us.
"We pivoted from dog social network to enterprise dog social network."
Pivot
A graceful word for sprinting in the opposite direction of last quarter promise.
"We pivoted so hard the old roadmap got vertigo."
Circle back
To revisit a topic with the full intention of forgetting it again.
"Let us circle back next week, the polite burial of a good idea."
Circle back
A verbal placeholder for I am not dealing with this right now.
"He circled back so many times the topic got dizzy."
Ping
To send a one-word message that demands a paragraph of context you did not provide.
"He pinged me with just hey and then went silent for an hour."
Ping
A digital tap on the shoulder, repeated until you respond out of spite.
"Three pings, two DMs, and an email, all for a yes or no."
Synergize
To hold a meeting that produces a smaller meeting.
"We synergized for an hour and scheduled a follow-up to synergize more."
Optics
How a decision looks, weighted far above whether it is any good.
"The layoffs had bad optics, which worried them more than the layoffs."