Nvidians, Metamates, Amazonians: These are the nicknames that tech workers call themselves
Tech workers have some interesting nicknames.
The tech industry is no stranger to corporate jargon and word salad.
Comedian John Mulaney, in his set on the closing night of Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco earlier this month, skewered the industry for it, among other things.
“Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three days,” he said. “The fact that there are 45,000 ‘trailblazers’ here couldn’t devalue the title anymore.”
Fortunately some terms in the industry, specifically what its companies call their workers, are much more straightforward.
From Metamates to Amazonians, here are popular nicknames for employees at various tech companies:
Google also has nicknames for new and ex-employees.
Google employees are simply called “Googlers,” though new employees are sometimes referred to as “Nooglers.”
Former employees are called “Xooglers.”
Amazon
Amazon announced a new return-to-office mandate this week
Just as the company is named after the Amazon river, employees there are also called “Amazonians.”
Meta (formerly Facebook)
“Metamates” are actually named in the company’s core values.
After Facebook’s rebrand to Meta in 2021, employees went from being “Facebookers” to “Metamates.”
One of the company’s six core values is to think of “Meta, metamates, me.”
“We are stewards of our company and our mission,” the company’s culture page says about this phrase. “We have a sense of responsibility for our collective success and to each other as teammates. It’s about taking care of our company and each other.”
Microsoft
Those who work at Microsoft are sometimes called “Microsofties.”
Microsoft employees are sometimes referred to as “Microsofties” or simply “Softies.”
The company in 2020 published a blog post about the “life of a Microsoftie.”
Anthropic
Employees at AI firm Anthropic are called “ants.”
At Anthropic, the AI company behind the chatbot Claude, employees are called “Ants.”
“Maybe I would have advocated for a different employee nickname, but it’s fine. That ship has sailed,” Anthropic chief product officer Mike Krieger told The Verge earlier this month.
X (formerly Twitter)
When X was still called Twitter, employees were referred to as “tweeps.”
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it X, employees called themselves “tweeps.”
It’s not clear if employees have taken to calling themselves a new nickname since Musk took over.
Nvidia
Nvidia employees are simply called “Nvidians.”
Employees at the AI chipmaker run by Jensen Huang are called “Nvidians.”
The company name is pronounced “en-VID-ee-uh” and takes inspiration from “invidia,” Latin for “envy.”
But that’s not the full story behind the name. Early on, founders Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem didn’t yet have a name for the startup and, in the meantime, named files “NV” for “next version,” Fortune previously reported.
Apple
Apple Store technical support retail workers are famously called Geniuses.
Apple doesn’t seem to have a popular nickname for corporate employees in the way some of its peers in the industry do, though it famously calls workers at Apple stores Geniuses.
