A Non-Engineer’s Translation Guide to Living With One

If you’ve ever heard an engineer pause mid-sentence to debate whether a term like “commit” should really be used as a noun, you’re not alone.

I recently stumbled across an internal Slack thread from one of our teams that perfectly captured those “non trivial” moments when engineering-speak sneaks into our daily lives in unexpected ways – often leading to delightful moments of confusion. My wife is prone to holding up a big L for loser above her head whenever I slip one of these nerdy expressions into my vernacular.

For those who live alongside deeply technical people, I thought I’d share a few of the translation decoder ring comments from that discussion. Consider it a sort of non-engineer’s guide to surviving dinner with one.

To start, you definitely don’t want to be a “blocker.” In a product sprint, you can work together to get past it, but when it’s your fiancee, use with caution – especially when you’re waiting for them to take out the trash.

One of my personal favorites: The engineer who was reminded that "shipping" is a programmer euphemism after introducing a ton of confusion about what he'd actually been doing at work lately.

And the brave soul considering whether they could get away with suggesting they “table this for now and circle back later,” while discussing doing the dishes or laundry. That might make perfect sense in JIRA, but it’s probably a less effective conflict resolution strategy. The business person’s version of this is “putting a pin in it,”and that expression also gets a big L from my wife and kids when I use it.

All of this made me smile because it shows how naturally work language seeps into everyday life, and how funny it can be when our worlds collide. But it also speaks to something much bigger. A great engineering culture thrives when people feel free to question, play with ideas, and laugh together. These little linguistic adventures reflect the passion, expertise, and a community of people who genuinely care about what they build. The debates, precise language, and passionate defenses of grammar all reflect how deeply our engineers care about their craft.

For the record, here are a few other terms to watch for as you navigate your relationship:

• Edge Case
  Home application: Any scenario your partner thinks will probably not happen, but has designed a flowchart for anyway.
  
  
• Debugging
  Home application: Finding the source of the mysterious noise the dishwasher is making. Often involves headlamps.
  
  
• Root Cause Analysis
  Home application: Why the router went down… or why the houseplants died.
  
  
• Out of Scope
  Home application: Folding fitted sheets.
  
  
• Low-Lift
  Home application: The chore that absolutely will take you all day to complete.
  
  
• Version Control
  Home application: Remembering which streaming password you changed last.
  
  
• Hard Stop
  Home application: Dinner reservations you’re already late for.

Even our pets aren’t immune. After all, they certainly did not sign up to be part of the “dogfooding” product testing pipeline.

I’d love to hear your lost in translation engineering favorites, too. But “net-net,” engineers accidentally applying agile frameworks to household chores and even non-trivial tasks is one of the great ways they keep life interesting!

‍