Workplace Glossary

Browse 33 workplace terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

33 Workplace Terms

Badge
A physical or digital identifier used for access, attendance, affiliation, or status, such as office badges, conference badges, or achievement badges in...
Breakroom
A shared office space used for breaks, snacks, informal conversations, and decompressing away from desks or meeting rooms. In workplace culture, the breakroom...
Bring Your Own Device
A policy allowing employees to use personal laptops, phones, or tablets for work instead of only company-issued devices. Bring your own device policies trade...
Burnout
A state of chronic physical and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged work stress, characterized by cynicism, detachment, and reduced effectiveness. Rampant...
Comp
Short for compensation, including salary, bonus, equity, and other forms of pay. In startup conversation it often appears in hiring, leveling, and retention...
Ghost
To disappear from a conversation, thread, or process without explanation or follow-up. In work settings it often describes someone who stops responding when...
Golden Handcuffs
Financial incentives such as equity, vesting, or unusually strong compensation that make someone reluctant to leave a job they otherwise would quit.
Impostor Syndrome
The persistent internal experience of believing you're not as competent as others perceive you to be, despite external evidence of success. Rampant in tech,...
Karen Ticket
A mocking term for a support or escalation ticket framed as entitled, unreasonable, or excessively demanding. It is informal and often rude, so teams generally...
Main Character Energy
A joking description for someone acting as if the entire story or organization revolves around them. In tech it often describes meetings, launches, or...
Meeting Tax
The productivity cost of recurring meetings that consume focus time and reduce time available for actual work.
Meritocracy Myth
The critique that organizations often claim pure merit-based advancement while ignoring bias, politics, and structural advantage.
Micromanage
To control work at an overly detailed level, leaving too little autonomy for the person doing it. In engineering it usually creates slower decisions and weaker...
Not My Circus
A phrase meaning a chaotic problem is someone else's responsibility, often borrowed from the fuller saying about not being your monkeys. In tech it can signal...
Not My Department
A phrase used to reject responsibility by pointing to organizational boundaries rather than solving the immediate issue. It is usually heard as bureaucratic...
No Worries
A casual reassurance meaning the issue is fine, forgiven, or not a problem. In work chat it often softens small mistakes or delays.
On-Call Culture
The norms and expectations surrounding pager duty, incident ownership, and how teams support engineers who handle production issues.
Performance Improvement Plan
A formal workplace process used to document performance problems and required improvements, often viewed with anxiety in tech workplaces.
Performance Review
A formal evaluation of an employee's work, impact, strengths, and growth areas, often tied to compensation or promotion decisions. In startups, performance...
Performance Review Season
The period when employee evaluations, calibration, compensation conversations, and promotion decisions intensify.
Please Advise
A formal-sounding request for guidance, common in email and ticket comments, often with a faint undertone of passing responsibility upward. In technical...
Poke
To send a light follow-up message, reminder, or quick check-in, usually without escalating the issue. In work chat it is softer than demanding an answer...
Quiet Quitting Tech
Doing only the work reasonably required by the role, often framed by critics as disengagement and by supporters as healthy boundaries.
Ragequit
To quit abruptly in anger or frustration, whether from a game, conversation, job, or technical task. In engineering it often appears jokingly after a bad bug...
Rage Quit Tech
To leave a job, project, or technical process abruptly out of anger or accumulated frustration.
Remote Work
A work arrangement where people do their jobs outside a central office, often from home or other locations using digital collaboration tools. In tech, remote...
Reply All
The email action that responds to every recipient on a thread, often necessary in some contexts and regrettable in others. It is a small workplace mechanic...
Senior Moment
A self-deprecating phrase for a brief lapse in memory or attention, often used jokingly after forgetting something obvious. In engineering chat it usually...
Slack Overflow
An overload condition where too much work, coordination, and informal support flows through chat, making it hard to keep up or find signal.
Take It Offline
A request to move a detailed or side-topic discussion out of the current meeting or channel so the main group can continue. It can be efficient or a polite way...
Tech Layoff
A workforce reduction in the technology sector, often discussed as part of market cycles, cost cutting, or strategic resets.
Thrown Under the Bus
Sacrificed, blamed, or exposed unfairly so someone else or the broader organization can avoid responsibility. The phrase appears often in postmortem politics...
Warm Body
A dismissive term for a person treated as interchangeable staffing rather than as a skilled contributor, often used critically about poor hiring or management...

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