Welcome to the team! We’re super-glad to have you! Startup-office jargon is weird, and if you’ve never been in an office with a designated puppy enclosure or White Claw on tap, you might get confused. Below, you’ll see a list of words and phrases and their common usage in the tech space. Familiarize yourself with these, and you’ll be hitting your quarterly goals in no time. Don’t know what that is? Don’t worry — just read on.
Onboarding
Noun
The process by which new employees are indoctrinated by high-level members of the company espousing values like “Crush it on a daily basis” or “Win all the internet.”
Circle Back
Verb
This is startup lingo for “I’ll get back to you.” It’s a great way to brush off a pesky company with which you never intend on partnering, and it’s also how executives brush you off when you ask for important details until the night before you pitch a huge VC.
Help
Verb
This is a tricky one. You may think you know the definition of this word, but it doesn’t quite mean the same thing in the startup world. When someone asks you for help, what they really mean is that they want you to just do whatever they need “help” with. This is particularly relevant for people on the Office Operations Team.
Account Manager
Noun
A person at another company who is paid to deal with you. They can be either your best friend or your worst enemy. A good account manager will bend over backward to make your job easier, while a bad one will make you look like an incompetent dunce to executives.
Kickoff
Noun
A sports term expertly applied to the geeky startup world, a kickoff is a meeting that happens once a quarter at the beginning of a new project — or just when people from the remote offices want to come into town to party.
Action
Verb
To do something for someone who is either completely capable (but lazy) or someone who is wildly incapable to the degree that you wonder if they really should be making four times as much as you.
Townhall
Noun
A meeting in which the CEO gets to act like an amalgamation of a benevolent king and a rock star by letting everyone how well — or poorly — the company is doing and giving bonuses to salespeople.
Ping
Verb
This one sounds fun — “ping” is a funny word, after all. But after a few days, it will become the most insidious sound your mind can fathom. To ping simply means to message on Slack, and these notifications will almost certainly come at the most inopportune times.
1:1
Noun
A one-on-one meeting. You’ll see these all over people’s calendars. The more important the person, the larger the conference room they’ll book for a one-on-one. In the event that an executive books a 14-person room at the last minute to have a quick chat with their life coach, be prepared to squeeze your 12-person meeting into a telephone booth.
Quarterback
Verb
To take the lead on a project, usually for the purpose of getting a shout-out on Slack from someone on your team who didn’t pull their weight.
Sync
Verb
To sit down with someone of authority and be told that what you’re doing is wrong.
Standup
Noun
A regular informal meeting in which teams have to discuss their goals for the day and how they intend to achieve them. In other words, it’s circle time for adults.
Candidate
Noun
A person interviewing to work at your company. You can’t miss them — they’ll be friendly to the point of insincerity and will always deny the premium bottled water they are offered upon their arrival. See: Onboarding.
Swag
Noun
Branded items that each employee gets in order to promote the company while at the gym or the grocery store but that ultimately end up on the racks in the nearest Out of the Closet or Goodwill, only to be passed over by local hipsters on the hunt for ironic T-shirts.
