[Cederfjard]

> "Congratulations" on typed chat, phone call to boss within 3 minutes, and required a written report to senior senior management. There was unironic suggestions of doctors notes when the reason for the congratulations was their wife had just had their first kid.

I might be dense, what's the issue with congratulating someone? It can of course be for something untoward, but there are surely a lot more valid reasons for giving coworkers props ("congratulations on the promotion", "congratulations on your good work on project X", etc).

[shapefrog]

It is not necessary to engage in personal or small talk with brokers and counterparties at other banks in order to carry out a business conversation. In my case it was to a counterparty at another bank.

Champagne was a banned word as well. "I'll get the Champagne" in particular would see you sent to the Break Room for re-education. Shampoo and eventually derivatives of liquid with bubbles was also added to the list as creative traders mocked the system.

One phrase the Goldman software searched for: “How could this happen again?” https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/15/you-wont-believe-what-gets-a... The general lists are pretty tame - mid 2010's were pretty wild as all this stuff was coming in.

Savvy Goldman types have long favoured the nifty acronym LDL – let’s discuss live – as a way of avoiding writing the wrong things down. https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20...

[steveBK123]

This stuff in truth is very hard.

You have things like false alarms when acronyms start to overlap, like PA being "personal assistant" and "personal account".

And then stuff like Egol using "LDL" to take his conversations with his subordinate, Fabulous Fab off electronic form.

Fab ends up guilty of fraud, paying fines, and kicked out of industry to go work in academia.

Egol, who was his senior, and nearly a decade older so been through a few economic cycles.. stayed on with the firm 6 more years and then moved on up in the industry.