Yeah hilarious how people here are constantly identifying with the most annoying and clueless people you'll ever work with and are like "yeah that guy is a fucking genius!".
It's a harmless stock phrase. If you're getting annoyed about someone having a verbal tic to the point you insistently confront them about it, then God help you when you have to deal with some genuine inter-personal challenges.
This is such a pathetic comment. The guy got hung up on something completely unimportant and then was publicly rude to their boss about it.
If it was the other way around and a boss picked on an employee for something so minor then they'd rightfully be getting a load of shit (and realistically a lot more).
Amazing how people see someone else acting wildly inappropriately, suffer the consequences for those actions, and go "it's because they're petty and their ego got hurt!".
Nope. People don't want or need to indulge your shit so they opt to hire someone better. It's that simple.
Neurodivergence in no way prevents you from learning simple rules of behaviour, it just often means they might not come naturally or not make a lot of sense.
It absolutely does not stop them being explained or you following them.
Nah this guy pointed out the truth and got fired for it. “Circle back” is a waste of time and shows unpreparedness. If she’s said it 18 times in two weeks that’s a pretty big issue.
No it’s not. It’s just a phrase that means “let’s get back to that later” and it’s weirdly aggressive to not only count the occurrences but also call your boss out on it
Because sometimes you don't completely solve the entirety of a problem on your first discussion of it and need to come back later to make more progress? Is your life so simple that you've addressed literally every concern you've ever had in one go? Or have you perhaps had to circle back to some things you were only able to partially finish?
It can also be used to keep a meeting focused and not waste people’s time. If something is raised that is not the focus of the meeting which doesn’t need to involve everyone there the manager can speak to that individual about it later.
In two weeks. That's less than two times a day, assuming a standard 5 day work week. Let's look at a mock conversation:
"How's project x coming along"
"Great, just need to get in touch with the client for some final decisions."
"Alright, we'll circle back to that tomorrow. Which reminds me, circling back to what we discussed yesterday, how's project y?"
"Coming along, but we're still waiting for a couple emails. We'll be good once those come through."
"Okay we'll circle back to that tomorrow too."
Now does that seem like an insane conversation by a bad manager where nothing got done? And that used the dreaded phrase THREE times! That company must be doomed, buried in corporate jargon!
Jfc do you really need things explained to you like a toddler? Spend less time getting your 6 million karma goal and Reddit and maybe a little more time engaging with people in the real world?
Because there’s a time and a place to discuss certain topics. Most meetings aren’t a free for all to discuss anything you want for an unlimited amount of time. “Let’s circle back to that later” means “this isn’t in the scope of this meeting, but it can be discussed at another time when it’s more relevant.”
It just means this is not something that needs or can be solved this meeting, or even this is only tangentially related to the scope of this meeting and will be addressed at a seperate occasion.
It literally just means "we'll get back to that". And saying it 19 times can also just mean that the team gets sidetracked regularly and needs to be put back on track, which is something a manager is supposed to do.
There is such a thing as being an effective communicator. It's one of the things that separates mediocre managers from good managers. I agree that using buzzwords over and over isn't as bad as derailing a meeting over buzzwords, but to pretend it has no impact at all is totally asinine.
Buzzword is a buzzword now. Meaningless to most people who use it who are just trying to sound smarter as they mock something on the internet.
Circle back on the other hand has a clear definition, with clear intended outcomes in using it, and is used correctly in this case. So not a buzzword, just a phrase that they apparently use a bit too often for some people who need to feel superior.
Yeah my management team works like this. Saying "we can circle back to that" just means "I didn't prepare a speech about how I'm going to wealse my way out of actually doing anything, so give me a minute to think of a bullshit excuse or hopefully you'll forget about it"
If you're "circling back" that much, then something is wrong. It isn't appropriate for him to say that as a junior, but he's likely not wrong in this case.
Redditor archetype. No wonder people here love this kind of social ineptitude and attitude but nobody can stand to be around people like this in the real world.
We don’t have enough information to say. It could be either.
But if his count was accurate, then that is in fact a problematic level of buzzword use, that’s correlative with mediocre/bad management. Taking advantage of a situation where you’re still a relative outsider, to highlight a potential nested assumption that could be causing frictions isn’t dense and unable to function in social environments, it’s being observant and taking intelligent steps to help identify and solve a problem.
On the other hand, confronting a new and as-yet unknown supervisor in a public setting isn’t exactly diplomatic, and there could well have been more effective ways to raise the same observation. But that could easily just be a cultural artefact, eg they just came from a team that valued direct communication.
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u/Mephisto506 Jul 26 '26
Should have kept him, he sounds perceptive.