Common words, phrases, and acronyms you might hear while working in tech

People in tech talk funny — I had a hard time understanding them when I got my first job in the industry! If it’s helpful to anyone else, here are some translations (though some of these might be familiar, as there’s got to be some overlap with how people in other industries speak, too!).

• WFO/WFH. “Working from office”/“working from home.” This is just an acronym one can use to talk about one’s work location. “I’m wfh today.”
• RTO. “Return to office.” This might be used to talk about the shift to (and from) wfh/wfo caused by workplace changes following the pandemic. “My job’s going RTO” translates to: “the company I work at is having us return to the office.”
• PR. “Pull request.” This is a term that refers to something technical. Engineers can work in software like GitHub, which is a service that allows you to collaborate more easily on building software. Using git (and other things like it), you create changes on another “branch” of the current codebase. When you’re finished, you “push” your branch to GitHub, where one can “make a PR” for others to review, displaying it in the format of something called a “diff” (you can see the lines in each file in the codebase that have had any changes made). If it looks good to your colleague(s), your branch (and your changed code) is merged into the “master branch.” If you’d like to learn more, here is some documentation about it. Google’s version of this is a “CL” (change list).
• Tech island. This is a phrase that is used to describe companies with a ton of internally-made tools — so much so that working at them might make one feel like one is on an “island.” For example, most companies use off-the-shelf solutions in many parts of their codebases and workflows (e.g., open source tools, or commercial software like GitHub, etc.). At a company described as a “tech island,” they might make their own versions of these commonly used tools. When one leaves the “tech island,” one might feel really confused because one might not have used commercial software solutions in a while.
• Off-the-shelf. This refers to things that are readily commercially available. For instance, you might use “off-the-shelf” to describe common products and services (or dependencies) that are considered “standard tools for the job.”
• Cheap. Something is often described as “cheap” in the industry when something is “easy” to do (someone might also say “inexpensive”). For example, one might want to implement a new feature, but there’s an “expensive” way to do it, and then there’s an “inexpensive” way to do it.
• The stack. This refers to all the technology used in some software. For instance, the Facebook webapp is made using a specific version of PHP, among other things. Therefore, it can be said that “PHP is part of Facebook’s stack.”
• Server-side. Something is said to be “server-side” when something happens on “the server,” or the company’s managed machines (on which services, like Twitter, are hosted).
• Client-side. Something is said to be “client-side” when something is happening on “the client,” or the user’s device. For instance, storing things like session data (“cookies”) on a user’s device. Developers might want to make things appear (“render”) or store on peoples’ clients based on logic that is calculated server-side.
• Back-end (or “backend”). This refers to the position of some technology “in the stack.” Databases, GraphQL queries, etc., are examples of “back-end” work. Things that happen server-side are said to live in “the backend.”
• Front-end (or “frontend”). This refers to things that users see on their devices. So, for example, this view you’re seeing to read this article was put together by someone who had to do some work on the frontend to make it happen.
• SGTM/LGTM. “Sounds/looks good to me.” If you approve of something (like the changes in a PR), you could say “sgtm” (or emoji react it on a message, either with a custom SGTM emoji, or a thumbs up). You might also see “SGTM” coming from colleagues in the comments on PRs as a way to indicate an approved change.
• +1 (“plus one”). “I agree.” You might see people adding “+1” emojis on Slack, or verbally saying “plus one.”
• “Ship it.” This derives from the phrase “shipping code.” When someone says “ship it,” they might be saying “do it,” or otherwise expressing agreement.
• Value prop. This is a shortened version of “value proposition.” This phrase refers to the unique, differential “value” that a product or service is said to provide to a user. For instance, social media provides “value” to users by allowing them to connect with others and participate in social exchange; it might also provide business value, as businesses might want to pay to place ads in users’ feeds, which can be said to increase their profit. Someone who is skeptical of some software might ask: “what’s this thing’s value prop, though?”
• ROI. “Return on investment.” This refers to the “return” one gets from “investing” in something. This can be used literally, like when literally investing in something (“I put $10,000 in to X company 5 years ago, then I cashed out and made a $6 million return”). Or, it might refer to something less easily quantifiable: “what’s the ROI on an American degree these days, though?”
• The product. Refers to whatever the company makes. For example, someone at Twitter might be referring to Twitter, in whole, as “the product.” But this term is relative — for example, someone on a specific team inside of Twitter, working on a very specific feature or improvement, might be referring to that feature or improvement as “the product.” It’s context dependent. People at tech companies “build products.”
• The org. A shortened way of saying “the organization,” usually referring to the company that you work at.
• Reports. People who “report” to a manager. A manager might say something like: “I have six reports (‘six people who report to me, as a manager’).” If you have a manager, you’re that manager’s report. Managers might report to other managers, too.
• Individual contributor (“IC”). Someone who is not a manager, or has no reports. ICs tend to report to managers.
• Team lead (“TL”). A role assigned to someone, usually not formal (so not usually an “official” title on their offer letter), but used to describe someone who is a “lead” on something. For instance, there might be multiple engineers working on a feature, but only one could be said to “be the lead.” There’s often a “backend lead,” a “iOS lead,” or whatever your team needs. There might be leads on products or features, design leads, PM leads, and so on.
• Feature. This refers to some software that does something. It’s another relative term. So, for example, a feature can be a whole product (DMs on Twitter) — likewise, it can be a very small part of a product (the ability to unsend DMs).
• Feature team. In most tech companies, teams are formed around specific products or features. For example, there are many teams at Twitter, and each team focuses on a specific area of the product. For example, there is a team organized specifically on designing and maintaining Reels on Instagram, or DMs at Twitter, etc.
• Priority. The order in which things are worked on. This is often determined by product managers, but not always. You might hear someone say: “this is high pri (‘high priority’).”
• Roadmap. This refers to some agreed upon timeline of work. There are many roadmaps — they can exist at the very top of the company, defined by highest leadership; they can also exist on small feature teams. For instance, the DMs team at Twitter might have its own roadmap, but so might the Home Timeline team. On feature teams, lead PMs might set roadmaps in consultation with lead designers and lead engineers.
• Metrics. Some measure of something, usually being watched with some analytics tooling, often set up and reported on by data scientists. For example, social media companies might track likes, posts, and so on, as these are metrics worth watching to see if people really are using the product regularly, and what parts of the product they appear to use more than others. But there can also be financial metrics (company revenue).
• DAU, WAU, or any variation. “Daily active users,” or “weekly active users,” etc. This refers to users that return daily, or weekly, etc. Repeat users that return to your product with some frequency. A good measure of “sticky” behavior, or that something about the product is strongly resonating with them.
• OKR (“objectives and key results”). Tech companies often set OKRs, which usually occurs at the company leadership level, but there can also be OKRs on pillars, too, often set by pillar leads. These might be made yearly, or quarterly. An example of an OKR at a social media company might be something like: “Grow the conversation.” Then there are “key results” that could go into achieving that, like “increase DAU (daily active users) by 25%.” Teams at the company are encouraged to keep these company-wide goals in mind when building products.
• KPI (“key performance indicator”). KPIs and key results (see above) are often synonymous, but not always. For example, if leadership has set an objective that year to increase engagement on the platform, then an example of a KPI could be improvements to DAU, or increases in specific engagement metrics (e.g., increases in users liking things, posting things, replying to things, etc.).
• Product requirements, or just “requirements.” This is what is generally agreed on being “required” for a feature to ship. For example, to build a DM feature into your product, you need to give users the ability to send messages and receive them, which also implies some way to see messages you can send, and messages you are receiving. These can also be referred to as “P0s” or “P1s” (the “P” in here refers to “priority,” like a hard requirement). But you might also want to give users the ability to react to messages they receive — this may or may not be considered a requirement, it’s just up to your team. Other requirements might include technical concerns and constraints. PMs tend to gather and define these, but not always.
• PRD (or “product requirement doc,” sometimes people also call this a “spec,” or “product specification doc”). This is something written (usually in a Google doc, but can also be written into a ticket, or anywhere else), most often by PMs, that contains product requirements (see above). These docs also might include priorities, and additional context around why we believe the feature detailed in the doc should be worked on.
• Product manager (“PM”). Product managers work on feature teams — they often have an outsized effect on the roadmap, determining order of priorities, and the gathering of requirements. This is not a project manager, a role that is generally uncommon in tech companies (even large ones).
• Software developer/engineer. Someone who writes code — usually an IC, but not always. Some acronyms for this role include SWE (“SoftWare Engineer,” more common at Google), or SDE (“Software DEveloper,” more common at Amazon). “Developer” and “engineer” are used interchangeably (a notable, legal exception in one country).
• Designer. Someone who plans how software ought to work. This often includes defining its behavior, its appearance, etc. They are often embedded in feature teams, along with other roles, such as PMs and engineers. They often use something called Figma to express these plans.
• Copywriter, content designer, UX writer, product writer, or any variation. People who write words in software. Some examples might include: buttons, the words in educational modals, help docs, etc. Not every company or team hires for this specific role, so some people might unofficially take on this responsibility as a stopgap.
• Data scientist. People who use analytics (and other tooling) to pull information about user behavior on the product. This might include analysis of funnels, or where drop-offs happen. They might set up the analytics pipelines, or developers might. They might also do other kinds of internal reporting, like pull financial pipelines about the company to help finance analyze the business.
• Researcher, UX researcher, product researcher, or any variation. Someone who collects information about how users use the company’s software — sentiment, usage patterns (often in collaboration with data), etc.
• Product (team). Tech companies tend to have different “teams,” filled with their own, distinct ICs and managers, and they all do different things. Some example include: product (this sometimes includes design, but not always), design (this sometimes includes creative and research, but not always), creative, research, legal, data, engineering, etc. In the strictest sense, “product” in organizations tend to only be comprised of PMs. Most feature teams are made up of PMs, engineers, and designers, but can include other roles, too.
• Design (team). See above. This is the part of the org that includes designers.
• Creative (team). See above. These people usually work on the brand — visuals that go into ads, or the larger visual direction of the product, etc. This includes roles like illustrator, visual designer, art director, and so on. Uncommon in smaller companies.
• Data (team). See above.
• Research (team). See above.
• Engineering (team). See above.
• Product counsel, or legal. See above. Larger companies are more likely to have attorneys on staff.
• Bizdev (“business development”) (team). See above. This is a team comprised of people who tend to work out the financial plans for viability of various parts (or the whole) of the company. (I don’t really know too much about this part of the org, sorry.)
• EPD, PDE, or any variation. This is an acronym for “engineering, product, and design” teams. Can be in any order. Usually the core functions present in making features.
• XFN. “Cross-functional.” This usually is used when referring to “cross-functional partners.” For example, if you’re a designer at a tech company, for example, your XFN mainstays will likely include PMs and engineers, but you might also consult with copywriters, creatives, legal, and so on. These are often referred to as “stakeholders,” or “partners.”
• Level. This refers to the “level” someone might have. Levels occur on ladders. For instance, you can be on the design ladder, and be a junior designer (level 3, at one company), or a staff designer (level 6, at one company). Some companies have many levels (I’ve seen as many as ten) — some have only a few (for example, junior and senior). Your level determines your compensation.
• Ladder, or a “track.” This refers to a series of levels for a specific track. For example, Designer or Engineer is a specific ladder (track). There might be many levels on those ladders (or not). Another example of a track includes the manager track, or the IC track.
• “Comp” (or “compensation”). This refers to what one is paid for one’s work. Compensation at most tech companies usually includes some combination of base compensation and equity (in the form of RSUs, or “options,” which is more common at smaller companies).
• Base comp (“BC”). This refers to the salary, or the cash portion, of one’s compensation. If someone says they “prefer cash,” this means that they have a preference for salary in their compensation, rather than equity.
• Total comp (“TC”). This refers to total compensation, sometimes just called a “comp package.” BC + equity = TC.
• 1:1 (“one-on-one”). This is a phrase used to describe a meeting between two parties, usually two people. Someone might ask if you “want to 1:1” with them.
• Async chat (used when referring to “asynchronous conversation”). Async conversation is when you chat asynchronously, in other words, when you chat on Slack, or whatever async conversation tools your company uses. The opposite of this is synchronous conversation, most notably in-person, or over video.
• “Getting into the weeds.” A phrase used to refer to something that’s very deeply detailed. Someone could be said to be “getting into the weeds too much” if they talk about something very technical that most people in the conversation might not know/need to know.
• “Let’s take this offline.” This is an invitation to chat about a topic async. Usually said when people are getting too into the weeds about something, usually technical.
• “Get alignment.” A phrase used to refer to getting people to agree to something (“get on the same page”). For instance, a PM might want to “get alignment” on some feature work, so s/he might want to talk to the designer and some engineers and get them all to agree on the direction and requirements.
• “Let’s touch base.” This one is probably familiar to most people — it’s usually used as a synonymous phrase for “I want to talk to you about something really quick.” Another similar phrase might be: “circle back.”
• “Let’s circle back” might translate to “let’s revisit this.” One could be said to be “circling back” to something when someone gets back around to doing something that they needed to do.
• “Let’s double click on {some topic},” which translates to “let’s discuss {some topic} in greater detail.”
• Pillar (or “vertical,” “product area,” etc.). This refers to some vertical in a product. For instance, Twitter might be separated into different “pillars” internally — and those pillars, themselves, have pillars. For instance, there might be the “H1” pillar, “H2,” “H3,” and so on. These include different products inside of them. For example, the “H1” pillar might have various products in it, like DMs, the home timeline, and other core functionality.
• Allhands (or “all-hands,” “all hands”). This is usually a meeting with lots of people on some team — there can be company allhands, or pillar allhands.
• rq. “Real quick,” or “really quickly.” Someone might say: “let’s talk about that rq in the meeting.”
• rn. “Right now.” One might say: “should we talk about this rn, or later?”
• Pipeline. Anything that’s got a beginning and an end, with some steps in between. There are hiring pipelines, engineering pipelines, data pipelines, design pipelines, etc.
• Loop (or “interview loop”). This refers to the full interview process from the candidate’s side. A full interview loop might include multiple steps a candidate needs to pass (e.g., phone screens, portfolio reviews, whiteboarding, app critiques, algorithm interviews, etc.) in order to get an offer. Someone could say they “finished the whole loop” if they went through a full hiring pipeline at some company.
• Venture capitalists (or “VC”). These are parties that give companies money with the expectation of a greater return than what they put in (investing!). There are individuals who are VCs, but there are also VC firms, so companies that invest in other companies. Some examples of VC firms include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and so on.
• B2B (“business to business”). A business model that sells products or services to other businesses (e.g., Facebook Ads allows businesses to buy ads on their platform, meaning that the Ads product is B2B).
• B2C (“business to consumer”). A business model that sells products or services to consumers (e.g., the microblogging service, Twitter, is a consumer-facing product built primarily for consumers to enjoy).
• Blocker. A blocker is something that “blocks” you from continuing on doing some work you agreed to do. For example, “I can’t merge in this fix until John’s fix is merged in, so I’m blocked.” Things that are blocking you would be considered “blockers.”
• People ops (“people operations”). This is another way to refer to human resources (“HR”). “HR” is less commonly used in tech companies.
• PIP (“performance improvement plan”). Tech companies tend to PIP people if they aren’t meeting performance expectations at the company.
• MVP (“minimum viable product”). The minimum you need to make a product, specifically for the purpose of a V1, where it’s a new product and you don’t want to build out all the bells and whistles just to see if the product flops or not.
• SLC (“simple, loveable, and complete”). This is just another way to talk about building an MVP — some feel that MVPs are too barebones, so they proposed an alternative view, the SLC. They might feel that there’s a way to build an MVP that has a little more meat on its bones — enough to show customers more than just the “bare minimum,” but a more “complete” MVP.
• SaaS (“software as a service”). It’s just the word used to describe companies that “sell” (they may or may not charge for the software, e.g., Instagram, Twitter, etc.) software. These companies make a service (e.g., Twitter) that is in the form of some software. So a company that does this can be said to be a SaaS company. (Not to be confused with SASS, a front-end web technology.)
• ARR (“annual recurring revenue”), MRR (“monthly recurring revenue”), or any variation. This refers to how much the business is pulling in on some time basis (yearly or monthly).
• Adoption, or growth. Depending on the context in which these words are used, but people generally use these terms to refer to the adoption or growth of the product — meaning the adoption of the product by users, or the growth of the product’s usage. So, for example, if users are “adopting” the product, it might be said that the rate of sign-ups and returns to the product are increasing over time. If this is the case, it can be said that the product is “experiencing growth.”
• FAANG, MAANG, FLAMNGASS, or any variation. These abbreviations are just made up groupings of companies that are broadly considered similar in key ways: namely, that they offer higher than typical compensation — sometimes, they are just grouped together based on being like-companies (i.e., they’re big and famous brands). I’m not sure where this started — it’s possible it started informally on Blind/in engineering subreddits. FAANG translates to Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google; now that Facebook’s called “Meta,” some people have switched over to MAANG (Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google). Sometimes, people compete to come up with the most humorous combinations (my preference!): FLAMNGASS (Facebook, Lyft, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Google, Amazon, Stripe, … um, there’s a last one but I’ve forgotten, sorry).

For now, that’s all I can think of. If any of you have any questions, or would like to add to this list, let me know!