Two Memos

Friday, 18 July 2014

Brian S. Hall poked me on Twitter yesterday:

“This style of communication is like reading a foreign language to me. I don’t understand what most of it means.” @gruber re Apple IBM memo.

I.e. that my criticism of the opaque business-jargon-laden style of Satya Nadella’s company-wide memo regarding Microsoft’s layoffs could apply just as aptly to Apple’s press release announcing their IBM partnership, which I didn’t criticize.

Hall has a point. That Apple press release is rather jargon-laden and opaque. I don’t know why that is, but my guess is that as a joint initiative, the press release was written jointly by Apple and IBM. Most press releases from Apple, though formal, are better written. (Some are even poignant in their relative brevity.)

But, to compare a press release to a company-wide memo is a bit of an apple-to-oranges situation. A company-wide memo is not a press release, and Tim Cook sent a company-wide memo regarding the IBM deal, too. Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn’t (yet?) post such memos for public consumption, but as usual, 9to5Mac has a copy (adorned with artwork from Darth).

Cook’s memo is short, clear, and jargon-free.1

You don’t have to be an industry insider to know that Microsoft and Apple have very different company cultures. One could argue that Nadella’s style is what Microsoft employees expect, and that my personal sensibilities more closely align with Apple’s culture. But I don’t buy it. I think clear writing is the result of clear thinking. Cook’s memo isn’t casual or informal; it simply isn’t dressed up with extraneous formalities and corporate-culture bromides. Nadella’s raises as many questions as it answers.

  1. My only criticism is that Cook doesn’t use the Oxford comma, but that’s a matter of taste. And perhaps it is apt that a man whose forte is efficiency would choose the terser style. ↩︎