> One of my team members has a hard time with English How did they get hired?
They are doing the job for the fraction of US salary. They know their native market very well. What problem you are seeing there?
They don’t fit international company.
Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
61–70 of 111 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#62> One of my team members has a hard time with English How did they get hired?
If we assume this is happening in a Mandarin speaking country, why to hire someone that doesn't speak the local language? Does this person bring to the table something that the locals can't? Then, there you have your answer too for the guy that doesn't speak English.
Half the team doesn’t speak Mandarin, which makes it international team, which makes knowing common language vital.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#63I would talk to the manager, explain what's happening, leaving my personal feelings aside.
Co-workers speaking non-shared languages in each other faces is not useful in any way and it leads to many problems, way beyond a non-welcoming and non-inclusive environment, way beyond just HR...
Moreover, and to answer some strange theories in other comments here, If you're to be excluded from a conversation, the speakers better get a room, where they can speak freely and leave you alone. Just staying around and speaking a language you don't understand is plain rude, a nuisance, and will distract you anyway. (and probably become annoying, in the long term)
Having said that, I would also learn some Mandarin. If not enough to enter the conversation, at least enough to say "Would you, please, be so kind as to speak English for me? I'm learning Mandarin, but I can't understand you well enough, yet."
This worked wonders for me, in more than a few occasions.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#64[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#65Unfortunately language has become a stand-in for race and culture, and it has somehow become an icky topic because, as you exemplify, some people are downright scared to even approach that subject for fear of being labeled a racist or an “asshole”. Let’s just completely separate the two and focus on the facts: your teammates are speaking in a language you don’t understand, in a more or less official capacity; it doesn’t matter what language it is, but what does matter is that it’s a problem and it leaves you and possibly other team members feeling uncomfortable. And believe it or not it’s ok to feel uncomfortable. I speak another language as well, and I would be ashamed to speak it with ANYONE in front of mixed company because it’s just rude. So your colleagues are being rude whether they realize or not. If I were the TL or PM I would politely mention in a team meeting that some people feel uncomfortable when others speak a language we don’t all understand and to please be considerate of others in those situations. No need for a reprimand or direct confrontation.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#66We have teams and companies in many places in the world and our common business language is English. When I'm traveling, we mostly speak in English, but there are moments where it's just the most practical thing to have the local team quickly speak in their native language and then we come back and try to summarize it in English. That seems like a good middle ground to me (as a native English speaker with modest German and long-faded French).
I always imagine how taxing (and frankly, unfair) it would be for me to have to be constantly running a background thread to decode English and periodically another foreground thread to see if I could express my next thought in English well enough, etc. However capable I am, I would appear slightly less capable in some situations because of this mental tax.
As a result, I'm firm that documentation, official communications, etc. do have to be in English, but live conversations among international teams are mostly, but not exclusively, in English.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#67> And recently, my other team members started using Mandarin between themselves
If you want to force yourself in a conversation where you weren't part of then why dont you learn mandarin? Just like they learnt English.
Either put in the efforts to learn a language or stop feeling the need to be part of every conversation. If they want you to be part of some conversation then they will speak English like you say they have been doing.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not. If my current boss is talking German fast enough, I can barely understand. Whenever he's talking with the legal team he's using German. This is a clear indication to me that my participation is unneeded (altough I do communicate with our lawyers on variety of subjects). Moreover, I think overhearing other people's conversations is impolite.
> No it’s not. Maybe to _you_, don’t assume other people are the same way. Along my whole career path (I’m a senior now) I’ve always been curious about the high-level technical stuff and took every opportunity to listen to knowledgeable people. I think there’s a term for it: incidental knowledge transfer. You might be stripping that person of the opportunity to grow, or maybe just to hear about something interesting…
I was sharing my personal experience with my boss because of
> think from someone else's point of view.
As for "incidental knowledge transfer" as you call it, there's another side of it: it's called distraction.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#69Esperanto.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with my team speaking a different language?
#70Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google.
I am assuming this is either Apple or Netflix in Seoul? Because Google, Amazon and Facebook dont have much of an office in SK.