Acronym Roulette

Life can be dull at MegaCorp. Every morning you clear out the daily dollop of meaningless crap from your Inbox; and every morning, a new flood of meeting invites insinuates its way into your calendar. These are less easy to simply delete - politically anyway, technically the same Delete key does the same job - because people can see you're not attending. That's bad, Dims automatically assume their time is more valuable than yours, and (alas) "I had better things to do than listen to you talk pony for half an hour" is not a career-enhancing excuse.

As a result, your average MegaCorp employee - we're all average, of course - spends at least five hours in any given week attending meetings devoid of one single relevant or interesting fact or opinion. Add that to the hour a day we all spend sorting through the email-based noise, that turns out at 3m hours a week spent on nothing.

Just as long as we're keeping the focus on productivity and cost-reduction.

One has to keep busy. Buzzword Bingo is a useful tool, but it's just too easy - the person with 'go ahead', 'evidences' and 'compliance' will almost always win. We need something with an element of risk; a modicum of payment; a reward for success; a real game!

I present... Acronym Roulette.

The rules are simple. You must invent acronyms that must be minuted and/or used by unsuspecting staff in the same meeting. There is a scoring system based on the acronym itself, the seniority of the person who unwittingly repeats it, and other multiplying factors. The winner is the person with the highest score. Usually, that will be whoever gets the most ludicrous acronym spoken by the most senior person.

Scoring is straightforward. Calculate the acronym's base value:

• 5 points for a harmless, non-rude acronym like 'CPO' for 'crime prevention office' or some such
• 10 points for inventing an organisation whose name ends up as a taboo word; for example, 'Network Intrusion Prevention System', NIPS
  

Simple! Now, calculate your 'delivery' multiplier:

• 2 x for delivering - deadpan, giggles lack style - the acronym for consumption in a confident, brazen manner
• 3 x for stating the full expanded name, and getting the acronym stated in in minutes
• 5 x for stating the full expanded name, and getting the acronym used in the actual call

Finally, calculate the seniority multiplier:

• 2 x for each level of seniority the person stating or minuting the acronym holds above the player, as reckoned by the official org chart

Additionally, there's the 'evasion' multiplier:

• 5 x for inventing an organisation who created the bogus acronym if challenged on the call
  

An example: I mention the 'Audit Risk Secure Environment' in a call (10 points); it's minuted as 'ARSE' (3x delivery multiplier); and the person doing the minutes was two levels above me (4x seniority multiplier); a total of 120 points. Beat that!

Why is this better than Buzzword Bingo? The risk! If you fool someone it's just funny. If they catch you on the meeting, you'll be in trouble. If they cotton on later, you'll probably be moved to the Lhasa field office to be shot by Chinese 'policemen' who'll have been told you're a Buddhist.

Then there's the 'double or quits' element. If you're busted with a bogus acronym, the fleet-of-thought will invoke the evasion multiplier and almost certainly win. Nothing tops getting away with inventing 'ARSE' by saying that the 'Domain Utilisation Monitoring Board' sponsored it. You'll certainly get fired when the Dimlord sees 'DUMB/ARSE' on the slide, but wouldn't it have been worth it?

Strato-dims fear nothing, except...

Whilst employed by a corporation several years ago, more 'little-corp' than mega-corp, there was a (then new) idea of "flattening the management structure". The big idea was that there wouldn't be more than four 'levels' between your busy non-dim (or dims...) and the CEO.
MegaCorp is yet to adapt (or even, explore) this idea. If you start with me, there are at least 8 layers of management up to the CEO; I don't know the exact figure as changing who reports to who is a form of MegaCorp management light entertainment. Still, way up there, up in the clouds, are the strato-dims.
The strato-dims are those that make their entire world revolve around "business"; their working day comprises of PowerPoint, meetings and conference calls. These are the people that 'build shareholder value' and other such strato-bullshit. Such strato-dims are mostly fearless, and willing to ruin the lives of whomever dares to step in their way.
But, they do have a weakness; their kryptonite is the gossip of the working masses. MegaCorp may be the biggest fish in the pond, but, it's time to cut costs; afterall, the CEO's next multi-millon bonus has got to come from somewhere. When times get tough, MegaCorp sheds people.
What's most curious is that no strato-dim can ever speak 'true'. The non-dims are well versed in strato-speak, so we can translate with barely a flicker of effort when a faced with announcements of "resizing", "rightsizing" or "offshoring".
The strato-dims still seems to cling to the belief that dressing up what is otherwise known as redundancies, pink slips, or p45's, will mean the masses remain calm and secure that their jobs are safe. I do wonder what the strato-dims are really afraid of...

Persistence maketh the career

MegaCorp rewards persistence, regardless of what is being persisted with.

For example, we have Geoffrey Dimhollow. Saddled with a difficult problem to solve, and an awful product with which to solve it, he persists; until someone else is dumb enough to stick their head above the parapet and solve it for him. Luckily, our boss is savvy enough to duck that flaming turd missile.

Right.

So, after we've been struggling along for a couple of years, performing the software equivalent of carefully pushing a turd - no longer flaming, but still somewhat ripe - up a steep hill with a piece of wet string, we get to a point where he has a different problem to solve. Naturally, we'd not be stupid enough to fall for it twice.

Right.

So, when trying to solve his problem again, we're pushing back harder. Dimhollow persists, and wheedles, and suggests, and regrets, and postulates, and insinuates, and persists some more. Eventually, the sheer weight of unqualified, uneducated, unmitigated, shameless irrelevant neverending crap will tip the balance. Or so he thinks. For we have strong leadership, so we won't be beaten this time.

Right.

In the hands of sages, persistence - tempered with wisdom - is a powerful, wonderful thing. In the hands of Dimhollow, persistence is the tool by which stupid ideas are made manifest by the work of others, to the benefit of noone except his own career. He won't get far. MegaCorp knows where its own interests lie.

Right.

Dim Ratio

Our part of MegaCorp stacks up like this: