Buzzword Swear Jar: Volume 2

Well, we’re back with another buzzword breakdown. This time we’re opening up that firehose, productionizing some key insights, and aligning on our day-to-day buzzword usage.

Low-Hanging Fruit

Let me paint you a picture. You’re working through a lot of problems. A mountain of bugs, feature requests, and tech debt. Then someone pipes up with, "Let’s focus on the low-hanging fruit.."

So when we're pressed for time, should we just do the easy stuff that’s really easy and won’t take a lot of time but will deliver maximum impact? Incredible strategy.

The reason this one earns a spot in the swear jar is simple: it’s pure obviousness dressed up as insight. Low-hanging fruit gets picked first. That’s not a management philosophy - it’s literally how fruit works.

Best Practice

What does this even mean? There is no universal checklist of solutions that apply to every situation beyond the most obvious stuff. Nobody is going to argue with using HTTPS or writing unit tests. But there is no one-size-fits-all testing strategy for every product, and there is no single correct approach to data retention, access management, or any of the other hairy problems teams actually face.

Ironically, blindly following “best practices” often leads to the opposite of good outcomes. Spinning up a massive data lake when you only have 100 users is not best practice, it is a waste of time. This phrase belongs in the jar because most of the time it is just shorthand for "I want to copy what others have done and I do not want to think about our specific problems."

Build vs. Buy

“Should we build this ourselves or buy something off the shelf?”

The problem isn’t the question itself - it’s a good question. The problem is that it's often considered as a binary choice between two clean, simple options. Build or buy. Easy. Except it’s not.

Migration is messy. “Out-of-the-box” solutions are never really out of the box. You’ll end up building weird little adapters anyway. Systems integration is never funded appropriately and ultimately relies on duct tape and prayers. And then you've got a whole mess of data sync problems, retention, and security reviews.

This belongs in the swear jar because it falsely reduces a complex decision into a coin flip.

Conclusion

Buzzwords aren't all bad. They can be useful shorthand for communication, but the problem is when they are used as a shield against actual critical thinking. That is when "low-hanging fruit" or "best practices" stops being helpful and starts being just your way of pretending to participate without actually contributing.

Buzzwords, please use responsibly.