The other day, I saw a post titled “Things you can’t say in Silicon Valley” (link omitted). I was looking forward to one of those “it’s funny because it’s true” critiques of the groupthink in the tech industry. Instead it was something…very different.

So, I wrote the list I was expecting. Enjoy!

Things you can’t say in Silicon Valley:

“I’m in my 30s”

“I’m leaving at 5:00”

“Let’s take a look at how people solved this problem in the past”

“The beer bash sounds cool, but I don’t drink”

“Let’s focus on the business solution, rather than obsessing around the tech behind it”

“The beer bash sounds cool, but I’d rather spend time with my kids”

“What happened over the last 2 weeks? I was on vacation and wasn’t online”

“The beer bash does not sound cool”

“Maybe blockchain isn’t the best way to do this”

“Sure, we could record and analyze that. But wouldn’t people find it creepy?”

“Mission statement? No, I took this job because I have bills to pay”

“Let’s get better at our core competency before expanding”

“Are we over-complicating something straightforward?”

“Getting funding doesn’t mean you’re a genius”

“Yeah, it’ll monetize. But does it actually help anyone?”

“This feature might annoy people”

“We don’t need a mobile version, it’s literally the same thing they see on the website”

“The equity you’re offering me is overvalued; I’d rather take cash”

“If we send a newsletter every other day, people might flag us as spam”

“There’s a personal touch that would be lost if we try to scale too fast”

“What about user privacy?”

“That’s not a real job title”

“Rather than spending all our energy on getting new users, let’s keep the users we have happy”

“Apple did that design. Let’s try something different.”

Any other good ones along these lines?