how to communicate in IT

gistfile1.md

How to communicate like a champ in the IT world

learn when and how to use these phrases

• herding cats
• is the juice worth the squeeze
• when you got a hammer everything looks like a nail
• that's a solution looking for a problem
• works on my machine!
• two birds with one stone
• do you want to ask for permission or beg for forgiveness
• I have a hard stop
• muscle memory
• war wounds
• teach a man to fish
• bring a horse to pasture
• I'm allergic to ... (your bad idea)
• secret sauce
• True North, or North Star
• change the engine at 30,000 feet...
• from a 10,000 foot view...

learn how to deflect the problem to someone else

• I think we need an expert opinion let's bring in (some poor chap)
• Learn the art of the compliment sandwich. This is something nice, followed by something horrible they want you to do, followed by something nice again. eg. John, you are so killing it on this project, we want you to reimplement that old POS system and work with all the asshole dba's, you are totally the man for the job!
• bring up "best practices" then they'll have to pull in some guy in who knows those best practices. Be careful with this one, see hoity toity section.

learn how to manipulate higher ups

• Some people only like an idea if they think its their own. The key is to lay out the problem, and gently lead them to the solution but let them say it out loud and proudly profess it's their idea, even though you kinds nudged them towards it, bring the horse to pasture (see how I did that)
• If you can't convince someone a few levels up yourself, convince all the people one level underneath them, but do it one by one. Then in some meeting they'll all start talking about it and be excited that they all had the same idea, and they'll probably even forget you talked to them at all, and the guy/gal at the top will just go along with it.
• don't be an asshole, no one likes an asshole.
• don't be all needy and high maintainance. No one is going to listen to you when you are a PITA.

if you want to sounds hoity toity pack these in your arsenol

• that is "orthonogal" to the issue at hand
• so the "metapoint" is...
• at google they ... (some overly complicated solution that doesn't solve/fit the problem at hand)
• at X conference you didn't get to go to, I learned that right way to do that is...