So what's the deal with techies and "so"?
So .. here’s a question: Have you noticed that tech workers start a lot of their sentences with the word, “So…?”Is it just me? Because I started to notice this around 1997 or so, when dot com companies started gaining in stature, importance, and wealth.
Tech veterans, recent hires, even people who left other careers to jump on the tech bandwagon would answer questions starting with the word “so.” As in, “So, what we do is strictly B-to-B,” or, “So .. I can’t tell you much about our upcoming release, except that it will radically change the way business is done.”
To be fair, it wasn’t just dot com workers. Some people I knew at chip companies, video game companies, and others, they would give me the “so,” too, but dot commers, that’s where you’d get it the most. It lasted through the boom, even the bust. Today, you’ll still hear it. Ask a question, and get a “So…” to start the response. I don’t get it from most other careers. Finance? Automotive? No “so.” Same with politicians. I’ve listened for it, but it’s not there. You don’t hear it from Clergy, either. In my experience, at least, it’s a tech thing.
So what?
I certainly start a lot of sentences with "so". While editing the longer things I write, it's a little bit of a problem, actually.
I think that's because the longer things I write are explanations. Here are the facts, and here are their consequences and implications, and that's why the best thing to do is such and such. The easy thing to do while bridging these steps is beginning sentences with "so" to show that they are justified by the previous statements. (I must admit I removed a couple of "so"s from this paragraph).
But that doesn't apply to starting a response with "so". That's just a verbal tic like "like".