Who hasn’t cringed at a LinkedIn post packed with empty buzzwords? That feeling that, beneath the pile of gibberish, there’s little to no substance. We’ve all been there.
It’s no wonder that when Kagi, a California-based premium search service, introduced its LinkedIn Speak translation feature, it struck a chord with white-collar workers all over the world.
LinkedIn itself has reacted to it, with its UK head, Janine Chamberlin, saying the tool is “actually very funny.”
Duolingo, the language learning app (well-known for its chronically online social media strategy), jumped on the trend. It posted on X a photo unveiling a new language: “Linkedinese.”
There is a grain of truth in every joke, as they say. Researchers at Cornell University have developed a way to measure how susceptible people are to this kind of language. In a recent paper, they introduced the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale, which assesses how easily individuals are influenced by what they describe as a “semantically empty and often confusing style of communication in organizational contexts that leverages abstruse corporate buzzwords and jargon in a functionally misleading way.”
They concluded that workers who fall for corporate bullshit may be worse at their jobs. At least now, we have a tool to help us not fall for it anymore.
We’ve gathered the funniest translations below:
16. Navigating complex regulatory frameworks
15. Successfully offboarded a colleague
14. Driving high-impact results
13. Excited to pivot
12. A high-impact release
11. It also translates from Linkedinese to English btw
10. Unexpected releases
9. We are family
8. Sir Mix-a-Lot
7. Showing up as my best self
6. Stealth mode
5. Horizontally networking
4. A high-stakes market entry
3. Rapidly upskilling
2. Feline stakeholders
1. Starting a new chapter
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