Google bans F-word in internal documents

Flickr/Haynes

• Google
  bans some references to sex acts in internal documents and
  URLs
• Employee speech is not covered by the new edict.
  Potty-mouthed workers have nothing to fear. 
• The ban comes four months after management issued new
  employee-behavior guidelines.

Words matter.

And some don’t belong in the
workplace, according to Google’s management.

The Register reports that Google
has issued an internal ban on the F-word and other references to
sex acts.

The company prohibits employees
from including outlawed words in company documents and URLs, says
the register. They are, however, not banned from speech.

In the #MeToo era, the rule seems
a no-brainer.

Google’s leadership has always
encouraged an
atmosphere of frank and direct communication, but apparently
sometimes in Google’s internal message boards, things can go too
far.

In June, Google issued
new employee behavior guidelines. They address how staffers
communicated with each other on those message boards.

The country has seen heated
political debate in recent years and the same is true inside the
company. Disagreements have at times gone too far.

In 2017,
Google fired James Damore after one of his posts to an
internal board triggered furor. Damore stated that women are
biologically less suited to engineering than men. He also said
Silicon Valley discriminates against conservatives.

That touched off bitter arguments
within Google, and many now-banned words made their way onto
company message boards, two former Google staffers told the
Register.

Some in Silicon Valley believe
Google is reaping what it sewed. The culture of frank discussion
has its limits and for too long Google had very few
limits.

“This is work,” Patty McCord,
Netflix’s former chief talent officer,
told Business Insider not long after Google released its
behavior guidelines.

She added that if it was her, she
might say:  “This is not home. You are not a child. We don’t
take care of you. You own your career… We can have fun and we
can celebrate and do all the happy s–t but we’re not everything
to you. Google kept the life-after-the-dorm around way past the
shelf life.”

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