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14 words you only understand if you work inside Google

Google employees
Google employees

Google

Google is massive company with more than 40,000 employees, but it has crafted a culture of Googlers who speak the same language.

To outsiders, the language used by employees of the internet company might sound like jibberish. But within the company, the Google dialect is second-nature.

Here’s some Google-specific words you learn once you start working inside the Googleplex.

Plex: The Googleplex, as its sprawling Mountain View campus is called, is shortened to the Plex by many employees.

GBike: The mode of transportation on Google’s campus, the GBike is known for its colorful frame. If you visit campus, you can even catch a glimpse of the conference room bike.

Stan: In the Googleplex, you’ll meet “Stan” — Google’s own T-Rex. The statue is there to remind the company to never become a dinosaur, or at least that’s one theory behind it.

Noogler: If you’re new to Google, expect to be called a Noogler. Pronounced “new-gler”, Nooglers are identifiable thanks to the Google-colored propeller caps they receive.

Gayglers: Members of the LGBT community (and their supporters) are known as Gayglers.

Greyglers: Another Googler nickname, Greyglers are Google employees 40 and older (although we’ll guess some of those in their forties aren’t sporting grey hairs). One of Google’s most prominent Greyglers is their Chief Internet Evangelist (and one of the fathers of the web) Vint Cerf.

Here’s a video of a Greygler talk he gave.

Xoogler: Once a Google employee leaves the company, they become a Xoogler. A shortened version of ex-Googler, Xoogler is actually pronounced “zoo-gler”.

Some have credited Google employee #59, Doug Edwards, as inventing the term Xoogler. His blog was one of the first to coin the term.

Googlegeist: This isn’t a ghost that haunts the Plex. The “Googlegeist” is an annual survey of all employees where they are asked to rate their managers and life at Google. While many employees would shy away from an HR questionnaire, more than 90 percent of Googlers fill it out every year.

Perf: Short for performance review, the dreaded annual Perf is what determines whether Googlers rise or fall in the coming year. It’s generally not what gets employees canned, though. Google tracks other performance reviews along the way.

TGIF: It does mean “Thank God It’s Friday” but it also is the name of the weekly all-hands meeting — confusingly, now held on Thursdays. The hour-long meeting dates back to the early days of Google, but is now held in a worldwide Google hangout. It’s also where Nooglers receive their hats. Here’s a throwback video to a TGIF meeting in 1999:

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Jolly Good Fellow: He’s not Santa, but Google employee Chade-Meng Tan is known as Google’s Jolly Good Fellow. “Fellow” is a term normally given to Google’s most valued engineers, but Tan’s title is to show what he’s working on: how to make people feel happy.

Here’s more about Chade-Meng Tan.

Tech stop: The codename for Google’s IT department, Tech Stop fixes employees computers and is a standard in Google offices worldwide.

20% time: Google allows its engineers to spend 20 percent of their time working on something other than their main job. In that time, Googlers have dreamed up some of Google’s biggest products, including Gmail, Google News and AdSense.

GUTS: This has nothing to do with Googler’s bodies. GUTS is short for Google Universal Ticketing Systems, or where Googlers file tickets about problems that the company can track. It’s like an internal 311 system.

FixIts: FixIts started out as a way for Google engineers to hunker-down and focus on backburner issues. They were originally 24-hour events, but FixIts have evolved into shorter bursts to clear backlogged projects.

Read more about FixIts here.

The post 14 words you only understand if you work inside Google appeared first on Business Insider.