That happens all the time, but it's because the acronym is not the point. For example, when some production system went down, a "swat team" was assembled to make sure that wouldn't happen. SWAT stands for something, but what it stands for is meaningless, it's just a unique identifier for the sort of activities that the team will engage in. It's like when people call an ATM an "ATM machine". To them, ATM is an opaque word, not an abbreviation for "automated teller machine". And that's fine; use a word enough and it becomes a word.
I think it's important to still learn what any internal acronyms and jargon mean, otherwise you can get into a "telephone game" situation where two people have acquired different and conflicting definitions for the same term.
In fact, the discussion that followed my question demonstrated that everyone had different ideas of what the acronym meant, and that those differences underlay some of the conflict over what to do about issues related to it. It wasn't just a placeholder for a shared concept; it was an active barrier to cooperation.
