WTF does GTM even mean? It depends...

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:35:44 -0400

I have a fascination, and sometimes an irreverence, for the way buzzwords can spread like wildfire in business. This is not a new habit. I have been making a small, happy nuisance of myself about it for years.

In 2013 I started writing for the Red Hat Developer Blog about a DevOps transformation we were running inside Red Hat IT, and somewhere in that series I went on a tear about managerspeak. My team hung a piece of paper on the wall with a Sharpie beside it, where we would write down the words that would never cross our lips. The next year, in a lightning talk at Surge 2014, I opened by ripping through the buzziest words of the moment, and then I said the thing I am proudest of from that era: “I’ve used up my buzzword quota, so now we can speak in plain English.”

Language on Notes from the Rabbit Hole

WTF does GTM even mean? It depends...