91–100 of 111 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are not part of the conversation And you can not become part of the conversation, which would not be the case if the language was the native one. Very rude and exclusionary.
Do you expect to be part of every conversation that you eavesdrop in the office?
Speaking as a former manager, it is your manager's responsibility to enforce English only. Speaking as a non-native English speaker, working in a FAANG office where nearly everyone speaks a certain language that's not English, when visitors or others who don't speak the language are present, we use English exclusively. Anything else is (correctly) considered rude - there are few things less welcoming than someone spe…
English only rules may violate (US) Federal Equal Opportunity Employment Law, so management needs to be careful to form a policy within the law and apply it within the law.
Obviously, business discussions need to be held in a language that all participants can understand, so there's room for a policy in that case. But (in the US), you can't usually have a policy on the language of business discussions in general, and almost certainly not for personal discussions.
Speaking as a former manager, it is your manager's responsibility to enforce English only. Speaking as a non-native English speaker, working in a FAANG office where nearly everyone speaks a certain language that's not English, when visitors or others who don't speak the language are present, we use English exclusively. Anything else is (correctly) considered rude - there are few things less welcoming than someone spe…
> Speaking as a former manager, it is your manager's responsibility to enforce English only. English only rules may violate (US) Federal Equal Opportunity Employment Law, so management needs to be careful to form a policy within the law and apply it within the law. Obviously, business discussions need to be held in a language that all participants can understand, so there's room for a policy in that case. But (in the…
I’m not super informed on the subject, but this runs directly contrary to my understanding. Highly regulated industries require English so regulatory authorities (both in internal and external) can track communication appropriately.
The language part isn’t the problem, it’s the feeling excluded part (which can occur in English too)
You can also keep it light hearted by being curious about Chinese language and helping their English.
Don’t resent it, if you were in China with a bunch of English speakers you wouldn’t be struggling through Chinese to communicate with them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are not part of the conversation And you can not become part of the conversation, which would not be the case if the language was the native one. Very rude and exclusionary.
Do you expect to be part of every conversation that you eavesdrop in the office?
> One of my team members has a hard time with English How did they get hired?
> I work in a FAANG office where a lot of people can speak Mandarin, but I'm not one of them. About half of my immediate team can, though. What is the official language of the company? If it's English, there are grounds to enforce it. The company should _not_ be hiring people on teams who cannot communicate in the common language - that is their failing. > My manager is remote and has no idea any of this is happening…
> What is the official language of the company? It's English. I know that this could be enforced by my manager or HR, but would prefer to handle it in a more direct/personal manner. > You can't manage an IRL team remotely. We are a "hybrid" team split between multiple US offices with a few fully remote members. So, kind of IRL but also kind of remote. Honestly though, there are a host of issues I've seen crop up acro…
It probably should be. I assume you're not the only English-only person in the office, and likely not the only person feeling uncomfortable. It's really not okay that they are deliberately cutting you out of import conversations.
> Honestly though, there are a host of issues I've seen crop up across my org that I suspect are products of a weak engineering culture caused by our partially-distributed setup. I don't think we're ever going to switch to being completely co-located, but I do wonder if I would have a better experience working in either a completely IRL or completely remote team.
Some will suggest that remote work is as (or more) productive as IRL work, but you're seeing a massive push to get people back into the office after the pandemic for a good reason. For example, it's bad enough that you are being left out of engineering conversations, but if you were all remote, you wouldn't even know there was a Mandarin only group chat for these things.
I won't re-hash the point about remote management, but this situation you find yourself in should have been picked up and dealt with by an IRL manager.
> Hadn't thought of this. I think they like me? But I guess both can be true.
I mean that they would no longer have the 'inconvenience' of having to facilitate you in English at all. They would also not have to follow any English (Western) cultural norms in the office either.
learn key phrases in mandarin - i dont understand. - in english please? - what's that about? - are you talking about (insert random mandarin word here that will make them laugh, eg cheeseburgers)?
I don't speak mandarin as such, but it's not exactly an obscure language, and I've had coworkers speak to each other in mandarin sporadically throughout my career (and I don't expect that to change), so much so that's it's not hard to pick up a few key phrases like these purely through osmosis:
* 我不知道
* 没办法
* 没有
I'd suggest making a token effort to learn a few phrases, and then adopt less of an "this is an English-speaking company, you must speak English when I am in earshot!" approach and more of a "i'm doing my best to understand/learn this mandarin, but I'm really bad and it's probably easier for you to use English..."
God, what a nightmare, that’s absolutely not your problem, tell your manager
>I don't want to be the asshole to ask people to speak in English, or make my manager be that guy either.
Uhh is this really what wokeism has done to us? Your teams performance is at stake, this isn’t you being racist or “uncool”.
Just talk to them. In English. I've worked in a multi-language business for many years where I did not speak all the languages, and there are two points I think you need to take to heart 1. No one can guess what you're feeling/thinking, you need to tell them 2. Don't take it personally if people are doing what comes naturally to them Your comment on benefit of the office is understood, but misguided; your colleagues…