These are awful, but the worst one for me is referring to "people" or "employees" as "resources". I feel a sharp surge of irritation every time someone does that.
Absolutely agreed. For me, this goes far beyond incorrect use of language: it's directly dehumanising because the term "resource" primarily describes inanimate objects. Resources are meant to be used, but people should be employed or managed.
In searching for the origin of this usage, I found this blog post[1] which attempts to explain arguments both for and against. But, to me, the arguments it lists under the heading "Why referring to people as resources is okay" are actually stronger arguments against. They're all about making certain management tasks easier by simplifying what's being managed. Unfortunately, this goes past simplification to homogenisation.
I've lost count of the times that I've seen management treat a big set of developers as equivalent resources, free to be reallocated to projects as needed. This approach never factors in how well certain people work together or the disruption caused by splitting up a well-functioning team.
It's not just that people aren't the same as objects; it's that people aren't even the same as each other.
I learned that they did this because some though that personell or staff would be too offensive. Same thing happened in Germany, were the English term HR is now more commonly used.
Whowever decided HR being less offensive shouldn't make judgement calls like that at all.
