Ask HN: Going to lead a struggling dev team in a different culture, now what?

The first thing that crossed my mind was "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

You almost certainly will find some people who already long for what you're going to advocate.

There is a fine line to tread to make these changes whilst delivering. There was never a point were we stopped everything to make all these changes. The changes have to happen gradually, and they do take a long time, many months. It involves changing people, teaching them new habits and helping them do it. The habits have to be sustainable.

Limiting work in progress, forces the issue upstream. Managers are forced to realise how much of a precious resource the team is, and why they are struggling. Throwing more work at a struggling team makes it even worse.

You may get some inspiration from https://www.codesimplicity.com/post/how-to-handle-code-compl...

Excerpt:

> It’s very tempting, if you’re a software engineering manager, to propose broad, sweeping solutions to problems that affect large areas. ... > > So what can you do as a manager...? Well, the trick is to get the data from the individual contributors and then work with them to help them resolve the issues.

I've just finished leading a company in SE Asia, so assuming you're somewhere near there, this is what I'd say from my experience:

- don't worry about the usual western alpha-coder crap or any defiance. You'll be respected because the boss says so. They won't give you any of the shit that a western dev team would do while they work out the pecking order - the hierarchy is the pecking order. BUT... no-one will tell you the truth, they will always tell you what they think you want to hear. Only ask open questions (if they can say yes they will), don't ask for opinions (you'll get whatever they think you want to hear). If you tell them to do something stupid, they will never tell you they think it's stupid. They might not go and do it, and hope you don't notice, or if you do notice that you will realise that what you told them to do was stupid and you're not going to lose face by mentioning it.

- Authority and hierarchy are massively more important and more rigid than in the west. I can't overstate this enough.

- you will constantly run into communication problems. They won't tell you when they don't understand you, but will nod and say yes boss and then go do their best to guess what they think you said. Ask if they understand often, and do that by the patronising-sounding "what did I just say?" or "what did I just tell you to do?". It's difficult, because we only do this with children in western culture, but it's necessary.

- Use email and written comms waaaay more than you would with a western team. It's easier for them to understand written english, and they can take their time over puzzling it out. And you have a audit trail of what you said (yes, they'll happily do the "you told me to do this" if they think they can get away with it).

- You will get automatic respect for being western (assuming you're white that is - racism is real here). So I wouldn't worry so much about demonstrating that the practices you want to introduce have actual value. That will be taken for granted because they're western practices. Instead make sure they're understood. That will be hard.

- If your boss is not western, they will expect total and complete obedience to their authority. Don't ever question them, contradict them, suggest alternative ideas, or tell them what they just told you won't work, at least in public and probably in private too. You will have to learn how to allow your boss to keep face while getting the right result.

- listen a lot more than you think you will have to. If something's not working, there's probably a cultural reason for the fail that you're not seeing. Listen harder and you'll discover it. Often it's easier to let them do things their way even if it's slower and less efficient, because trying to get them to do things the western way is too alien to their way of thinking. It's surprising how often this is the case.

that'll do... you'll learn the rest as you go. Good luck :)