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+\font\twelverm=ptmr7t at 12pt
+\twelverm
+\baselineskip=24pt
+\nopagenumbers
+\headline={\hfil Rohrer \number\pageno}
+{\obeylines
+Holden Rohrer
+Ms Rosner
+Hire Me
+2 Apr 2021}
+
+% The top three descriptors site supervisors use to describe good
+% interns include: enthusiastic, confident, and respectful. Describe how
+% you are embodying these descriptors presently at your internship site
+% and how you hope to embody them in your future career pursuits.
+
+% Also, entering a work environment can easily be compared to entering a
+% foreign county. The people around you speak a different language, have
+% spoken and unspoken politics, and cultural norms. How have you
+% navigated your internship culture?
+
+\centerline{Journal Prompt \#3: Work Environment}
+
+The Euroamerican work environment is designed to be consistent and
+polite.
+The American variant of ``professionalism'' is inherited from American
+sales culture.
+Sales is about communicating three main themes to your customer:
+dependability, courtesy, and sincerity, often without particular regard
+to the specific nature of the object of the sale.
+Interviews, meetings, and nearly any form of non-casual discussion
+become wrapped up in the language and structure of a sales pitch.
+Because sales is rarely concerned with objective or even clear
+communication of its object, neither are meetings, interviews, or work
+communication.
+Much discussion functions as virtue signalling, so buzzwords and
+monstrously opaque conglomerations like ``multifaceted, comprehensive
+solution'' abound.
+Real communication ends up hidden in coded phrases, and distinct from
+foreign languages, obfuscated by words or entire sentences that serve no
+substantive purpose.
+
+Fortunately, this trend is not universal or absolute.
+I'm enthusiastic about the work I'm doing, and in order to effectively
+produce software, I need to communicate substantively.
+While often run through a politeness filter, I'm discussing the features
+and functionality and issues of the program I'm working on, WellEntry,
+with other people on the team.
+I generally try to write concisely, which unfortunately contradicts with
+``work language,'' meaning I spend much longer writing a response than I
+would otherwise need to casually, especially because this writing also
+needs to communicate virtues like openness to critique and humility.
+
+This translation impedes oral communication less than writing because
+mistakes are more readily forgotten, but it isn't free of professional
+euphemism.
+Non-committal phrases like ``if it is necessary, which it could be not''
+occupy some of the space.
+Interestingly, the mental costs of switching language are nearly
+immaterial: the process of code-switching is practically automatic, so
+staying to this subset of English naturally communicates and forces one
+to only consider ideas which embody ``enthusiastic, confident, and
+respectful.''
+I will, necessarily, continue to use this style of language in my future
+career, and depending on the available content (or lack thereof) to
+discuss, embellish with empty words.
+Works like Strategic Vision Plans are especially vulnerable to such
+empty language, but I fortunately am not party to any such document, and
+7Factor's particular culture seems to be less affected by those styles
+(but not entitrely free of it).
+
+Non-verbal norms are also important.
+The language of body and attire were irrelevant during this internship
+due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but a unique part of this work is code
+reviews.
+7Factor does theirs through GitHub mostly, but extra comments also end
+up on Clubhouse, and a lot of communication happens in the mechanical
+interactions with these systems.
+Processes like ``requesting'' or ``re-requesting'' a review, or marking
+a project as ``In Development'' or ``Ready for Production'' are
+seemingly trivial processes which are actually moderately nuanced.
+One possible concern is the time that other people can allocate to
+looking at the code I've written: before I mark a piece of code as
+``completed'' or even mention it to my supervisor or other developers
+working on the same project, I need to be confident that it's functional
+and finished before marking it as such, in order to demonstrate respect
+for their time.
+
+\iffalse
+- Why are work environments' language so opaque?
+- Politeness as an ideal
+- I'm enthusiastic
+- I focus on quality of work and participating in the team
+- Return to code-switching (general) and professional euphemisms
+- Non-linguistic norms
+- Software teams existing before the proliferation of %bull$#*!
+\fi
+
+\bye