Ask HN: Is it OK for CEO to swear publicly? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it OK for CEO to swear publicly?

3 pointsdmitryame5 comments

Today, I had to sit through the "all hands" meeting, where the CEO publicly dropped the F-Bomb every other word.

Before posting the question here, I did a quick google search:

https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=is+it+OK+for+CEO+to+swear+publicly%3F&oq=is+it+OK+for+CEO+to+swear+publicly

And I'm kind of shocked -- most of the links, even from the reputable sources, suggest that swearing in public by CEOs (as well as by employees) is becoming a norm.

I don't get it? Do people really need to use profanity to be heard better? For me personally it works completely opposite -- when I hear someone swear, that person looses respect completely, and I'm ready to abandon the conversation right there on the spot. Having to listen to the offensive language just because the speaker is a CEO is very disturbing.

With all the #metoo movements and such, I personally see the necessity to reinforce the public messages with scenes of sexual nature, very unfortunate, offensive, and far from profeccional.

I realize, that based on the Google results, the answers to my post may not be what I wanted to hear. I don't even care how this post affects my HN karma. I do believe that the issue is serious enough and still, want to take the risk and find out, if there are at least some people that share the same attitude with me?

I do think that swearing in public and by employees is becoming the norm. I think this is good as it allows folks to use natural speech patterns. It means that folks aren't getting reprimanded for using the word "fuck" when something goes wrong or something is dropped on their toe or when expressing heightened emotion and things like this. I don't think it to be bad to say, "I don't know what the fuck these people were thinking, but it means we need to change x,y, and z" is a horrible thing to say in such a meeting.

I do think if it was actually excessive, it is a bit weird in this context. Not bothersome (as my own speech is naturally peppered with such language at times), just weird because I think a CEO should have some sort of balance between normal speech and awareness of how others perceive them.

I might also add that I don't find the word "fuck" to be at all sexual unless one is talking about sexual situations. I would much rather hear the word "fuck" - or any common obscenity - when they don't mean it rather than the codes people use to hint around at sexual situations.

I'm English. We have a robust attitude to swearing. I think it'd be weird to hear a CEO saying "fuck" unless they needed to do so to drive an important point home.

The word loses power if it's repeated. (What's the CEO going to say if things really do get bad?) But it also, as you say, makes the CEO look bad. I'm not sure exactly, but lazy, or dumb.

I know that some countries have a completely different understanding of the word, and see it as a mild swear. They'd think the equivalent in their language is not ok, but fuck is fine. So watch out for cultural differences.

Speaking of cultural language differences, is it OK for an English CEO to say "cunt"?

It depends on which English-speaking country they are coming from.

In the US, No, but they could call someone a "dick" and it wouldn't get the same sort of response.

Now, I don't know about other speaking countries and how they would view a CEO saying it, but I think it has less shock value in some other english speaking countries (Australia, for example). So it might be more OK.

Not an answer to your question just a note: the "f-bomb" is not typically considered "sexual" in the US. (I'm assuming you're in the US/Canada/similar due to context clues.)

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