Someone asked me last week if I’m “hands-on.”
I looked down. Both hands. Present. Attached. Fully on. Visible. I mean — you can see me. And then what? Compared to what, elbow coding?
I was rude to answer like that. But honestly, aren’t we all. Listen to how we talk. We call it “professional.” It’s not professional. It’s what a seven-year-old would invent if you gave him a Slack account and a standup.
Walk the talk. You can walk the park. You can walk the street. You can walk the dog. You can’t walk a talk — it isn’t there. So somebody flipped it to “talk the walk,” which doesn’t exist either, and we just... let them. We’re adults. Allegedly.
Circle back. A circle is 360 degrees. So “back” doesn’t even make sense — you end up exactly where you started. That’s the whole job of a circle. “Let’s circle back” means “I don’t want to answer this,” and somehow that’s the polite version.
Take it offline. We work online. The whole thing is online. Why would you take anything offline? Just say the real sentence: “I have a beef with you. Let’s settle it.” See? Human. Took two seconds. Nobody had to pretend “offline” exists.
I’ll support you. I’ll enable you. Now the manager phrases — a different species, and worse, because they sound kind. Do you hear yourself?
I’ve got a guy on my team. Call him Henk. Henk is better than me at the thing we both do. And I’m supposed to look at Henk and say “I’m here to enable you”? Enable him to what — keep being twice the engineer I am? You enable a feature flag. You don’t enable Henk. If anything, Henk enables me. He’s the reason my meetings have anything in them.
“Support” is the same word in a softer sweater. I support Henk the way a folding chair supports a powerlifter.
I’m a politician. People say this about themselves now. With pride. “I have to be a bit political about this.” It’s the only room on earth where announcing you’ll dodge the question counts as a talent. The honest version is two words — “I won’t” — and somehow that’s the rude one.
And it doesn’t just dodge the question, it dodges the work. “It’s political” is the magic phrase that excuses everyone from doing anything, ever. Why’s it broken? Political. Why not fix it? Political. You can’t argue with it, because it’s not a reason — it’s a forcefield. Henk could fix the thing in an afternoon. But it’s political, so instead we’ll have a meeting about it. Tuesday.
And the wild part is we all nod. Forty faces in gallery view, nodding at words with nothing inside them, completely straight, like it’s normal, like our hands come off. The one time someone asks “wait — what do you actually mean?” — they’re the alien. They sneezed at the funeral.
Last week, I did it. I stopped the meeting. “Quick one,” I said. “What’s hands-on? I can see my hands. They haven’t moved.” Silence. A cough. Then someone leaned in and said we should really focus on delivery. Bla bla. And the whole room exhaled, relieved — because delivery is a useful word until nobody asks what was actually delivered. And just like that, we were home.
So here’s the bad advice: talk like a person. Like a kid, even — kids are blunt and they are never once confused about what they mean. “I don’t know yet, I’ll tell you Thursday.” “I disagree.” “This is blocked because of X.” Real sentences. The kind that can be wrong, which is the scary part, because then someone could check.
Or keep nodding. Say “let’s circle back.”
You won’t, though. The geometry won’t let you.
By order of thebeanengineer.com — speak human. Be an engineer. 🚀