Ask HN: Do You Cuss in Meetings? 6 by paulriddle | 8 comments on Hacker News. Something I've noticed is that if nobody cusses and tries to be professional then it means that meetings are going to be boring, filled with anxiety and generally have dense atmosphere. Because certain essential emotional realms are not explored. If swearing is a big deal, then most likely there isn't much genuine laughter as well, people are afraid to speak up, no criticism, no valuable feedback, engineers are easily intimidated by the higher ups into tighter deadlines, no comradery, etc. It is such a good heuristics that I'm tempted to conclude that no cussing means a room filled with losers. I don't mean gross language, I mean something like occasional fuck here and there. I'm Russian, and this is the experience I have with Russian people, but I think it also applies to American and European cultures. In general Russian people are more emotionally reserved, and the language doesn'