Conversation in plain language

Hello! Today I would like to share with you a short story that should (in any case, I hope) once again draw attention to the question of the permissibility of using professionalisms and specific technical terms when talking with people.

I have an appointment with the customer. Theme of the meeting: modernization of network equipment in the central office. At the appointed time I go to the meeting room, where the discussion of the project with the customer has already begun. On the part of the customer, IT director and technical specialist. Our manager holds the opening word, after which he passes the word to me. I decide to go straight to the point, I issue the following monologue:

“We will put two switches in the core of the network. Combine them on the BCC stack. We start access switches through the aggregated LACPI channels. This will allow us to do without loops. In any case, we turn on the STP along with all the guards on the ports. Vlans will root on the network core. Themselves are spilled on the rest of the switches through the ECP. On the core, we configure the ADCs with which we will provide the primary network segmentation. To communicate with the branches, we raise the dynamics. Only summarized routes will be sent to the branches, so that there is less flapping. Plus, we twist the timers to ensure fast network convergence. On access switches on ports, we launch security functions (port security, DAI, etc.). To deal with storms, we’ll turn on storm control and tighten control-politics everywhere. From the point of view of control, we will set up time synchronization via NTP. We will merge syslog messages centrally. And through snmp we will periodically water the devices: loading cpu, memory, channels. To do this, set our monitoring system on equipment ”

In the same vein, I described all other aspects of modernizing the customer’s network. When I asked if there were any questions, they answered no to me. Well, excellent, that means I have accomplished my mission and can now give my colleagues talk on more mundane topics.


After meeting with a sense of accomplishment, realizing that there were no more urgent matters, I decided to finally go to a car service. The machine has been asking for this for a long time, but there was no time, then desire, then a meteorite suddenly appeared on the horizon and it was not easy to think of such trivial things. Since the crisis, I decided not to go to the dealer. I found a car service through friends where I could turn to. In general, I’m making a call asking me to accept me, I am warning my colleagues that I’m leaving, and I’m going to treat my car.

Having approached the car service, I park the car and make a call to the master. After 5 minutes, a person leaves the boxes. A measured gait approaches me. Having introduced himself as Uncle Gena, he begins to ask in a friendly manner how things were going, after which he proceeds to the goal of our meeting, namely: come on, lay out what bothers you.

- “Yes, the brake light has burned out. There was a knock in the front suspension. And it seems to me that the car began to chat a little. Yes, even the car began to work noisier, especially when you give gas ”

-“ So, let's see. It’s good that the frog didn’t die, otherwise the ass might not be there anymore. We’ll definitely take a look at the suspension. It will only be necessary to raise. Surely, the bones rattled and the pancakes tore. Still it will be necessary to check the wheel alignment on the backside, since acorns could fail ”

In my head there was a picture of a deceased reptile and, worst of all, without a hitch. Apparently, I was lucky that she was still alive somewhere, this frog. Bones? I wonder whose? Although not important, the main thing is not human. It was hard to imagine torn pancakes. You can tear a pancake as a culinary product. But the pancake from the gym is already hard. Regarding acorns, the thought came up: oh, it's winter, where will I get the acorns? Probably in the store, but where else?

- “And, by the way, is there no vibration when driving?” Or maybe the ring popped out of the grenade? ”

At this moment I wanted to ask: can it be time to hide, since the ring popped up? Or is it too late?

“As for the noise, the pants could have burned out.” All the same, we will drive the lift, at the same time and see. We’ll do everything, don’t worry, my friend. Let's see the timing belt, what's with its wear. And then the valve pistons will catch up, here the repair will immediately result in a pretty penny. ”

Then, with a smile on my face, I imagined how they drove me to the lift to check if my pants were burnt. Then the fun arose in my head: how pistons chase valves. And when they catch up, it ends sadly: apparently, the valves go to another machine world. Since I told about all my experiences, it remains to find out when to pick up my car.

“You better get me tomorrow. I'll tell you for sure. I need to finish with one thing and take care of your swallow. And then Andreyevich arrived, and his shirt flowed. Now it gets warm all the time. By the way, do you understand everything? ”

I nodded back. Further, having imagined Andreevich in a sodden shirt, sitting near a fire to keep warm (everything is logical, winter is not long in a wet shirt and in the shirt), I went towards the subway. At the same time, I did not leave the feeling of easy discomfort, as there was a feeling that we spoke different languages, although in Russian, and the whole conversation was nothing more than a “white noise”.


What do we have in the end? On the one hand, the use of technical terms and professionalism supposedly raises our prestige in the eyes of other people who are "not quite in the subject." On the other hand, the abundance of such terms significantly complicates the dialogue, sometimes presenting it as a black box for one of the parties. A person ceases to grasp the essence and at the end of the conversation he has two options for the development of events: trust these people (sort of like they poured cunning terms, which means they should understand this) or look for someone else who can explain on fingers how As a result, IT infrastructure will work. It is difficult to answer the question which path a person who finds himself in this situation will choose. In the first case, a certain pattern of behavior works:
use specialized terms, which means they understand the topic. In the second case, another pattern may play: they said something to me, obviously decided to hang noodles on my ears in order to take more money.

I think it’s clear that in order not to turn your speech in front of other people into an endless stream of professionalism, you should definitely understand the depth of a person’s knowledge in the area under discussion with which we communicate. Everyone will tell me that this is obvious. Yes, you will be right. The only problem is that very often for some reason we forget about it, and those who are passionate about their story (and how else, we do our favorite thing, which means we are ready to talk about it with gleam in our eyes) do not take into account the fact that the interlocutor may not have specialized terms.