A Year At Google: The Profundity of No Profanity

For my Google one year anniversary post, I thought about a lot of the big things I have experienced at Google in the last year:? the almost supernaturally intelligent engineers and dedicated and caring managers, the process by which dissenting opinions are addressed and reconciled, and the scientific approach to building and refining large systems that I find revolutionary.

But instead of the big things, I want to mention a small one that I think reveals a larger truth.? At Google, in my experience, there is very little swearing.? This is not to say that employees won’t occasionally utter one (or, that such an utterance would be reported or immediately reprimanded).? This is not some dystopian control of employees, quite the opposite - it’s an expectation of thoughtful, controlled use of language.? It’s a recognition of the power of language to shape a healthy working environment.??

In almost all of the startups and corporate environments I have experienced over the last 30 years, dropping an occasional F Bomb was seen as a sign of authenticity, a way to show intention, emotional commitment and seriousness.? In the past, I believed that being able to swear in the workplace also was an expression of freedom that could make engineering teams act more like sporting team, and could be an expression of esprit de corps. ?

But obscenities also turn the workplace into the profane, the prosaic, the mundane.? Because swearing is something that anyone can do.? Google and YouTube have higher expectations of you.? By not swearing, we create a more comfortable and inclusive working environment, and learn to channel our frustrations into fruitful change instead of pointless outbursts.? And especially during times of stress (ie: outages, missing deadlines), avoiding swearing keeps us from producing unhelpful stressor chemicals that prevent rather than enhance effective problem-solving.

This separation of the profane from the workplace most importantly emphasizes the sacred nature of what Google is trying to do - “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”? This isn’t some bizspeak gobbledygook - this is a mission that puts Google and YouTube in the same continuum as the scribes and philosophers of the ancient world.? It’s the same mission that inspired Guttenberg and those that used his invention to bring deep informational change to the masses for the first time.? Engineering on world-spanning systems is a sacred calling, and it deserves a profound sense of humility and venerated dedication to participate in effectively.??

So thank you Google, for helping me fully participate in the vision I had in 1995 - that the Internet would one day let all of us see, and be seen.? What I had imagined was YouTube.? For a long time I believed this was something I could code myself in a startup skunkworks.? Now, I know the reality - that it takes 18 years, thousands of brilliant and dedicated women and men, and the right engineering culture and processes to build and evolve the most reliable video system on the planet.? And I feel, truly feel, that we’re just getting started. ?