The culture map: How to navigate foreign cultures in business • Hacker News Board

Re: The culture map: How to navigate foreign cultures in business

#61

Post by stcroixx » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 2:28 PM UTC

jojobas wrote: post #24

version_five wrote: post #14

I've worked with people from a lot of different cultures in various scientific and technical situations, with mostly North Americans in more nebulous "business" situations. What I'd generalize is that on technical matters, there are few communication issues across cultures. People are able to make themselves understood and collaborate, even in the face of language barriers. On the other hand, even simple business dis…

We (Australians) have been hit with some serious stuff with our Filipino subsidiary. They've been asked to do something, they realized it was not the right thing to do a week in, still did what they've been asked for more than two months. Later when we realized we asked the wrong thing, they said "oh yes of course we knew it was not the right thing". The convention that you don't argue with "the boss" cost us many ma…

Sounds like incompetency to me. Knowingly wasting months should be a dealbreaker.

Re: The culture map: How to navigate foreign cultures in business

#62

Post by mbg721 » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #13

Daub wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a more personal note, the California Yes is super frustrating when making plans with people. Just because someone said Yes, does not mean they have any intention of actually showing up. They might get a headache an hour or so before the planned meeting time. Headaches are very popular in California it seems. The Californian 'Yes' sounds like the Japan one. British understatement gets me in trouble when communica…

I realised that “It’s okay” can have three very different meanings: “It’s okay!” => (reassuringly), it’s fine, perhaps even great. “It’s okay” => (honestly), it’s neither good nor bad. “It’s okay ” => (politely) This is terrible. For some reason non-native speakers and the occasional yank have problems with this.

"Would you like to donate to [x cause] today?"

"That's okay" => No.

Re: The culture map: How to navigate foreign cultures in business

#63

Post by j45 » Tue, Jun 06, 2023, 1:01 AM UTC

unsupp0rted wrote: post #52

j45 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word ‘done’ can disproportionately mean different things culturally and geographically between average and above average developers.

Done = ready to be used to do what it’s made to do I’ve lived in many cultures. In what culture, does “done” not mean that? In some cultures you may lie about it being done, but internally you know what’s being asked and that you’re lying in reply.

Not the experience of many.

Done can mean I'm done my first pass but this is untested.

Done can mean I think I did what you asked but I never checked or verified my assumptions, nor were there enough input.

Re: The culture map: How to navigate foreign cultures in business

#64

Post by fwlr » Tue, Jun 06, 2023, 6:38 AM UTC

unsupp0rted wrote: post #53

fwlr wrote: post #43

Another important difference in business cultures is handling difficult or unachievable requirements. Say you send a work order that needs very tight tolerance in a certain set of holes or a high degree of flatness on a particular surface, and while the company can make the part, they cannot quite fulfill that specific requirement. How each culture handles that situation can vary dramatically, especially outside of t…

A couple of those approaches result in building things that work, efficiently at scale. The rest don’t.

It’s tempting to think this, and I’ve thought this way before, but I don’t think it’s true. All of the cultures mentioned in my comment are manufacturing powerhouses - by most measures, each has (at different points) been literally the best in the world at manufacturing. I don’t think you can get that without being able to build things that work, efficiently, at scale.

I do think it’s true that some cultural approaches are so incompatible with each other that they will never be able to work together efficiently at scale, but each culture is internally consistent and knows how to operate within itself.