This is a YouTube video titled "STOP Using Acronyms | A Bit of Optimism #Podcast" featuring a conversation between Jeff Bezos and Jason Fried recorded in July 2025. They discuss the use of acronyms in professional and cultural settings, emphasizing clarity in communication to avoid excluding people who may not understand certain abbreviations or slang.
We do a thing in our company where I won't allow acronyms unless there are standard acronyms. And by standard acronyms I mean like asap, rsvp, those are fine because everybody knows what they are. But when we start abbreviating the names of products and things and the reason I won't allow them is because I don't want somebody to feel dumb because there might be one person in the room who doesn't know what doesn't get. And that's unfair. Just call it what it is. Yes, right now, again. Or we start using them externally because they become so ingrained in our culture you start just referring to them willy nilly. I've sat in meetings with military people and they speak in acronyms and I can only ask a couple of times, what do you mean by that one? Because it gets to the point of ridiculous, but I felt completely left out of conversations before and.
Being left out, not good manners.
And feeling left out, not good manners.
I don't care what accent you have. But if you're using too much slang or you're using too many abbreviations or Gen Z speak, for example, if people can't understand you, that's when it's an.
