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We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

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Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#511

Post by to11mtm »

freakynit wrote: post #126
causalscience wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as…

> Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so.

Semi related to this, one of the biggest 'breakthroughs' in building the right trust/rapport with an offshore team was sending an email to their leadership making it clear and on the record that "Comments against pull requests should not be used against the employee in reviews, if there is a recurring issue I will discuss it via other channels."

That one email changed PR back-and-forth entirely, cause yeah I guess sometimes they'd get dinged for too many PR comments on some metric. At first their management wasn't thrilled, thankfully there was a good enough improvement in quality and defect rate that in a couple months they were won over.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#512

Post by code_for_monkey »

freakynit wrote: post #126
causalscience wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as…

my managers are indian, and honestly Im struggling. Do you have any advice? I feel like im not allowed to ask questions, a lot of our processes dont make sense to me.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#513

Post by freakynit »

lostlogin wrote: post #337
freakynit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as…

> 996 culture. I hadn’t heard of this, thanks. Working 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

Work cultures are brutal in SEA and South Asia countries. And there is no job security, no social security, no labour laws(on paper they are, but, are not applied) and no liveable pay(this is changing though).

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#514

Post by anonzzzies »

nout wrote: post #446
overfeed wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which of course is a lot less polite and causes a lot of friction. Most cultures have this, but it goes mostly unnoticed from the inside because one can read between the lines. "How are you?" can be asked just to be polite, and can cause friction when answered truthfully (rather than just politely, as the cultural dance requires). An Eastern European may not appreciate the insincerity of such a question.

A fairly common conversation starter for eastern europeans is "how are you doing?", "it sucks", "yeah it does, doesn't it?". The American style of being all flowers and butterflies can indeed be perceived as lying.

It is fine if it is not lying but so often you ask how are you and get the flowers and butterflies response but when you sit 10 min more they start explaining how miserable they are: as a Dutchman, I do tend to ask why they said how great and excellent they were just minutes ago. And no, it is not just something you do out of politeness: if you just canned response to one thing, how do I know you don't have canned responses to many more things which are in fact lies at this point in time? I don't want to talk with Zendesk, I want to chat with someone I just met in the pub.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#515

Post by freakynit »

to11mtm wrote: post #511
freakynit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as…

> Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they fee…

I missed adding this to the advice section. But glad you pointed it out and shared your positive experience with it. Thanks..

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#516

Post by freakynit »

code_for_monkey wrote: post #512
freakynit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as…

my managers are indian, and honestly Im struggling. Do you have any advice? I feel like im not allowed to ask questions, a lot of our processes dont make sense to me.

Not the advice Im proud to give (or anyone should give), but the one that will work: Create dependency on yourself, company-wide, and make sure the boss knows about it. Avoid direct confrontation with your manager.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#517

Post by to11mtm »

koliber wrote: post #212
freakynit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as…

I've seen an interesting behavior in India. If I ask someone on the street for directions, they will always give me an answer, even if they don't know. If they don't know, they'll make something up. This was strange. I asked a lot of Indian people about it and they said that it has to do with "saving face". Saying "I don't know" is a disgraceful thing. So if someone does not know the answer, they make something up in…

> This behavior appears in software projects as well. It's difficult to work like this.

I have seen that across just about every culture in the software engineering world.

And not just in the 'business' itself. I still remember the argument I had with an Infosec guy where he absolutely insisted that every Jeep had AWD or 4WD from the factory, Even naming ones that didn't did nothing until I more or less passively aggressively sent him wikipedia links to a few vehicles.

At which point he proceeded to claim "No I said it was always a standard option" ... To be clear this whole argument started because someone asked why I swore by Subarus and mentioned 'Every US Model but the BRZ has AWD standard' but Heep owners gotta have false pride, idk.

People do weird shit with imposter syndrome sometimes, IDK.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#519

Post by freakynit »

Aloha wrote: post #486
freakynit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as…

Thank you for this cultural explanation - I've experienced the same thing with Japanese co-workers - there is often a "no" but to American ears its so subtle that it often goes in one ear and out the other.

Both the cultures suffer from "a senior is always right" mentality. Therefore, with my juniors, I used to intentionally (sometimes, and mostly during early days of their joinings) make stupid little mistakes (harmless) and used to let those folks figure that out and then appreciate them on catching it. Worked like wonder. Never ever anyone hesitated to discuss anything with me anytime.. even personal issues many times :)

You just have to make it easy for others to do their jobs. Removing barriers, of any kind, helps. This is even more true with juniors.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#520

Post by ErroneousBosh »

freakynit wrote: post #126
causalscience wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as…

> 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as disrespect or incompetence. So, instead of asking for clarification, many people just "do something" and hope it is acceptable. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society.

Damn me, Scotland is going to be quite the culture shock for you.

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