Google bans F-word in company documents and URLs, as leaders continue to pacify employee communications
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."