Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask vs. Guess Culture

jeanhsu.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 493 posts

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#131

Post by jzb »

chromoblob wrote: post #40
jzb wrote: post #12

"It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you" I feel this in my bones. When I was a kid my dad went off on me after we visited someone's house and I saw cake on the counter and asked for a slice. That was just unacceptable. (Context: He was raised by people who lived through the depression. Food scarcity was a real thing in living memory.) Even though his reaction was way overboard, I stil…

And miss out a lot...

I can honestly say I don't regret a policy of not asking people for things in general. If somebody wants me to have some of their cake, or whatever, then I'm usually happy to accept. But I can't think of a time when I am like "gee, I missed out by not asking for that thing."

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#132

Post by voxl »

jzb wrote: post #12

"It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you" I feel this in my bones. When I was a kid my dad went off on me after we visited someone's house and I saw cake on the counter and asked for a slice. That was just unacceptable. (Context: He was raised by people who lived through the depression. Food scarcity was a real thing in living memory.) Even though his reaction was way overboard, I stil…

I suppose different people will have different tastes, but I will never agree that this is rude and that you should not ask. You should not be upset when declined, but that is another matter.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#133

Post by g9yuayon »

I grew up in China and the guess culture was predominant there. It was quite a culture shock after I came to the US. In a training session back when I was in IBM, the VP of marketing told us a story about the ask culture: he was an American-born Japanese. When Lou Gerstner asked him what he wanted, he instinctively tried to be humble. Lou cut him off and said: I can't help you if you don't tell me what you want. Come back in X months when you know the answer. The next time they met, the VP told Lou that he wanted to be an executive, and he got promoted soon. Another thing I learned in the training session was that leaders have different styles but all the executives demonstrated only one of the four key styles: direct and decisive.

As time went by, I found it was much easier to adapt to the ask culture. I also found consistency matters more than the styles. When I consistently ask with good intention, people would not take offense.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#134

Post by AndrewKemendo »

throwanem wrote: post #123
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I’ve learned anything in my 20 year mental health journey, it’s that until you’ve addressed your childhood trauma, nothing you do will be a lasting fix for any interpersonal issues you may have.

If you've learned anything in your 20-year mental health journey, I hope it would be that not everyone is exactly like you, nor needs the same things you need. It's remarkably self-centered to assume the prescription that's suited you is exactly right for everyone else, don't you think?

That’s also definitely true!

Some people are lucky to not have significant childhood trauma which means it was never needing to be resolved

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#135

Post by jzb »

sneak wrote: post #55
jzb wrote: post #12

"It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you" I feel this in my bones. When I was a kid my dad went off on me after we visited someone's house and I saw cake on the counter and asked for a slice. That was just unacceptable. (Context: He was raised by people who lived through the depression. Food scarcity was a real thing in living memory.) Even though his reaction was way overboard, I stil…

All good and meaningful relationships involve give and take, and sometimes saying no, so this reduces to "it's rude to have close human relationships with people" (because close human relationships necessarily involve sometimes saying no). There is an argument that such a worldview is slightly pathological.

As I said upthread - lots of caveats and it's context dependent. For one thing, this usually assumed there was not a "close human relationship" but social situations where you aren't that close.

It has to be OK to say no. In many scenarios or cultures it is considered rude to say no. So if you're not able to gracefully say no without being considered rude, it's correspondingly rude to ask because you're basically saying "do this for me or else you're rude."

It's not an ask at that point, it's a demand. If I'm the asshole if I say no, then I don't want to be asked the question in the first place.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#136

Post by gopher_space »

jzb wrote: post #12

"It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you" I feel this in my bones. When I was a kid my dad went off on me after we visited someone's house and I saw cake on the counter and asked for a slice. That was just unacceptable. (Context: He was raised by people who lived through the depression. Food scarcity was a real thing in living memory.) Even though his reaction was way overboard, I stil…

My grandmother said you’d offer food to guests because you knew they were hungry and they’d refuse because they knew you didn’t have enough for yourself. If you actually had enough food for a meal you needed to convince your houseguest.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#137

Post by burlesona »

quacked wrote: post #7

I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) [1]. In the first several years of our relationship, we had several big disputes about how to treat each other, and how to treat guests. After a while we realized that she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity over responding to the needs of guests, and I had been brought up to be blithe…

This is fascinating to me, because I'm from the southern US and strongly align to "ask culture" and my wife is from the northwest and strongly aligns to "guess" culture.

I wonder how much it's about individual family background and not strongly regional?

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#139

Post by robotresearcher »

EGreg wrote: post #115
boppo1 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>addressed your childhood trauma This is pretty frustrating as 90s-kid who had a Good Childhood™ and struggles with interpersonal issues. I have a close friend from childhood who also had quite a Good Childhood™ and he can't shut up about "trauma" and it seems like every two years he has this big epiphany about how he addressed some "trauma" he was previously repressing and how now that he's done so he's All Better N…

I sometimes like to say the facts out loud and challenge people so here it goes. We live in the safest, least racist, least sexist, least antisemitic generation in history. At the same time, automation and productivity has reduced demand for human labor, and people increasingly can’t afford the rent. Perhaps the answer to many disparities isn’t systemic sexism, racism etc. but economic factors. Whatever you are worri…

> At the same time, automation and productivity has reduced demand for human labor

We have approximately the lowest unemployment rate in modern history.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#140

Post by xeromal »

samus wrote: post #66
carabiner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds more like urban vs rural. The southerners I've known (Alabama) are pretty blunt about asking for what they want. Going further with stereotypes, some people say west coast is guess, east is ask.

Indeed rural vs. urban is another divide across which such differences are observed. People from big metro areas are usually more blunt than in the surroundings. Probably because people there usually come from diverse backgrounds, but "guess" culture requires the opposite to work.

As someone who's lived in both environments, I think most urban people develop a shell from the constant interaction that's required in a city. People selling wares, hobos/homeless, and a stronger need to protect oneself. You have to be blunt or you'll never get anywhere. lol.
Post reply on HN