The Modern Archivist

Goldman All Red Over Profanity

“boy, that timberwof was one s— deal.”

This one line tormented Goldman Sachs throughout the Senate’s investigation and is highlighted in recent bad press about their curse-laden culture.  Shockingly, these aren’t even as bad as it getswhen it comes to regrettable corporate e-mails that have been leaked to the press.  In response, Goldman Sachs has banned profanity from electronic communications, joining the ranks of Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase. Not a bad idea after losing $535M to the SEC in July.   

The lawsuit and investigation, which was in part based on Goldman’s own traders calling their deals “shi**y”, underlines the need for companies to review communications system-wide.  I am sure that Goldman is looking for software that can pre-review emails for certain phrases (like shi**y) and alert the sender and the sender’s management of the breach of policy.  Without that level of monitoring and review, employees can cost companies millions…and in this case, over half a billion. And any software that does this level of pre-review can go far beyond Goldman’s enforcement of their new curse code (or whatever they are calling it) and includes the protection of intellectual property, personal information, and general Data Loss Prevention.

People might see profanity censorship as draconian, yet this has become standard practice for many companies. Bloomberg LP says that it has monitored emails for over 10 years. As Kendall Coffee, former federal prosecutor says, “There is case after case of email disaster that is reported in newspapers or media, and you would think that the last thing any rational person would do would be to…use profanity in email, but it seems to be an unlearnable lesson.”

I agree and doubt there is any way to stop traders from using profanity.  But is it too much to hope that Goldman can learn to stop trying to f*!@ its investors?  We’ll see.