Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are making too many assumptions about the nature of our conversations just in a single comment. Imagine a situation: a newly joined junior dev is given a task to implement a web scraper. Meanwhile, senior devs sitting beside her start discussing AWS bills for the previous month, pretty much in a casual way. Do you think she should a) be given a chance to participate in this discussion b) carry on with her task, a…
I find reducing distraction is best served by providing sufficient means for a person to isolate oneself physically. If you feel like the conversation is a private one between yourself and another, the correct approach is not to speak in a different language. Not only does that not scale, it only solves your problem, you don't get to decide how the junior feels about it, and neither do they. If you're a senior, you s…
Most definitely yes. But she never really shared with us what she felt. So when I heard from my boss she wasn't OK with us talking Russian I was like: WTF, how doesn't she understand she has a privilege to speak her native language at the office while most of the employees have to resort to the silly form of English they learnt at school?