To be a good software engineer, become a French skeptic
karltarvas.com
karltarvas.com
I would start conversations the "French way" to debate certain aspects of how/why things are done, but it backfired because I did it in a clumsy way, without considering the cultural gap and how people were expected to communicate at this company.
Today, I easily switch between American and French styles, but it took me a while to understand what my California-based coworkers meant when they said "it's more important to be kind than to be right"!
Curious to hear if this happens to other expats too.
I think the french habit is to jump to the flaws, because that's where work needs to get done, but I now learn that there is a ton of value in taking the time to recognize when a work has been done appropriately or when it surpassed expectations.
I always believed having one "French" mindset person in the team is an asset as a counter balance to the "Yes everything is awesome". Much like the UK is (was I guess) to the EU, simply because it opens up new perspectives / discussions.
Now if you have more than one (or a tiny percentage on really large teams) that's probably where the troubles start.
The Indian attitude must be the polar opposite then. "Yes I understand. We'll do the needful."
Always read between the lines. Pickup on any hesitations, wishy-washy statements and the like and interact accordingly. Get commitments written down.
Hierarchy is important; bosses throw their weight around. You have to be diplomatic in managing it.
Engineers crave recognition. Give them plenty of positive feedback and incentives. Treat them as equals and they will open up. Once this happens they can become very friendly and often personal but that is the culture.
Finally, make a trip to India and do meet your remote team members. Personal interaction allows you to setup relationships which are invaluable in getting things done.
I'm from Sweden, and a Swedish colleague met a team that visited from India. Half-way through the meeting she had to stop and ask why the Indian team were shaking their heads. It turns out it was a head bobble or Indian head shake.[1]
My colleague thought that they kept signalling "no, no, no" by shaking their heads while she was speaking, but it turned out to be the exact opposite. I'm very happy my colleague stopped and asked, because a lot of people would stay silent and keep their misconceptions.
I always get annoyed when people go with preconceived notions and stereotypes rather than asking/figuring out for themselves. In today's "Yellow-journalism style media" facts and truth are no longer relevant but everything is turned into a caricature. We should know better in this era of "Globalization". "Cultural Sensitivity" is much more important than we realize.
The second part is right: it is "why?" first. The "say no first" I think is not a French thing, that's the result of the clash between the French work culture (don't laugh) and others.
We are a bit anti-authority, I think it is hard to deny this trait. We don't like being bossed around but that's not systematic or unavoidable: we just want to follow orders we respect. So in France, you almost never give orders to someone without explaining the why (and complain about the clueless boss/client that made this order a necessity). Give us a good reason, the first answer will be yes.
In many cultures (and especially here in Japan) the why is often omitted. Without a why, we are very tempted to just say no. State a good reason or stop wasting people time.
I do believe it is a defense mechanism we built against terrible managers.
This is interesting. I'm Swedish, and in a previous job I had a series of meetings with a French hardware design team. We were taught internally before the meeting, and it seemed to be confirmed during the meeting, that the French would be much more hierarchical than what we were used to, and that the French designers wouldn't contradict their manager in the meeting. If the manager said something, the designers would defend it, even if incorrect.
Contrast that with the typically flat organizations of a Swedish company, and where a designer would be expected to correct a manager in a meeting if they said something incorrect, otherwise you're letting the manager down. If you know that something can't be done, for example, and have more information than the manager, you're expected to say something. All of my managers would have been upset if I let them look like a fool in a meeting by making decisions with incomplete information, if I knew something that could help them. Both of us would lose status by me not saying anything, rather than both losing status by me piping up during the meeting.
That's not to say that the Swedish culture is perfect! A lot of people I've worked with from abroad are annoyed by the consensus culture that everyone here has to agree on everything. That can mean long times where no one seems to make a decision, and a decision can be revisited and flipped because someone later disagrees. I can see how it can be frustrating to never know for sure if something is decided or not, and that it can feel like managers don't take their responsibility if they want the whole group to make most decisions together. Or, the decision can be unclear to someone from a different culture, because the Swedish manager thought that the group reached consensus without the actual decision having to be spelled out.
It is not wrong to say we are hierarchical, but a more nuanced way of saying it is that we will respect hierarchy formally but will short-circuit it informally as much as we can. "Managing your manager" is seen as a chore that we all have to do in order to get going. We respect hierarchies but it is very common to see managers as a hindrance rather than a thing we are grateful for.
Of course every person and team is different, so you may be spot on with that case you are mentioning, but I think that calling this behavior hierarchical is missing the core dynamics there.
We are used to conflicts or at least frictions in many interactions, internally or externally. There is a sense of group and supporting the group, even if you think the leader is stupid. In the situation you describe, the average behavior I expect from the French team would be for the french colleagues of the clueless manager to nod to their boss stupidity in public but to privately call him for it or try to remove him.
There is a time for overthrowing kings and a time for fighting Prussians, if you know what I mean.
Actionable advice: if you are ever in a situation where you feel you have to deal with a clueless French manager, try to discreetly get connections with the people below him, they are likely to be more than happy to short-circuit their bosses.
Positively reinforced by a taught history of overcoming oppression.
A good team environment consists of people of many different personality types, and this is one of them. Implying that those who always say "yes", try out new ideas, take risks etc. are bad engineers is wrong.
No, not at all.
A lot of comments are very definitive on how things should be or how you should act. Contextually, they may well be correct. But a good software engineer should always look for the deeper underlying issues. Working and communicating well with others and coming to collective decisions has a lot of contextual nuance. But it's always good to distill advice from others and look at what principle they are trying to advocate.
I once claimed to my boss the company should be paying me not for what I do but for what I don't do. I think they agreed.
I've long ago learned that 'why?' is the most aggressive question. 'Why?' makes people defensive. 'Why?' is the start of an argument, where the other side is just 'why not?'. It's not going to help move anything forwards.
Try 'Yes, and..'. Try 'How about?'. Try 'I don't know'. Try 'Why don't we try?'. And try 'Can you show me?'
____terrible, terrible experience. please dont.___
btw. if ur programming for 5 years and you have 3 guys that do the same for 15-20 it might be actually good idea to listen to them without this 'question everything' attitude and maybe learn somwthing new? in some places there's no time to be lost on questioning everything... tre bien
some times its not about authority and culture but simply about experience
It's good to be skeptical and not jumping into conclusion right away, but there is another option other than yes and no, which is "not sure", or I need more time to discuss/research/learn
French is just lack of this humble attitude
so I can said that this is just another arrogant French reason to justify the rude behaviour
Come on, this is pretty vapid even for a blogpost on HN.
Your job is to PLEASE YOUR CUSTOMER. See that person who is paying you/us money? While you're on the clock, bringing a smile to their face is your reason for being. You either commit to that, by whatever means you have at your disposal... or someone else gets the job. Period.
How did that become replaced by obsequiousness?
From my observation this maybe applies to politics or government but there is a lot of deference to authority within corporations. People often seem to feel they have no rights there.
"money talks"
Indeed. And this is especially true in California where the employment agreements are almost always "at will". In Europe it is much harder to fire someone - or, at the very least, they have to come up with a pretext to do it.
So, I suspect that employment law has at least as much to do with the culture of saying no than anything else. The stronger job protections gives the worker space to be loyal to the company mission rather than the boss.
You're absolutely right. but if the only way to get the job is to promise and deliver more than is reasonable given cost and time constraints, you are vastly better off not getting the job.
How do you consistently say no without appearing oppositional?
I think the important thing is that it must be clear why you say no, which means explaining your reasons so that others either agree with you, or chose to camp on their decision while knowing fully that it's just an opinion and not a fact. "No" is a recap of your thinking, so you need to lay out all the work that led you to this conclusion. When people understand it's not about them, they might not take it as personally and take a step back.
It's even better to be constructive (because "no" shouldn't mean "I don't like you" but "this is not the best way"). A method I've learned about is the "Yes! No. Yes?" (https://www.fastcompany.com/3026980/yes-no-yes-how-to-turn-s...). The idea is basically what I said above: make the other person understand that the exact thing you're talking about is not possible, but that doesn't mean you reject them as a person and you're not open to change. You're closing a door but you're not barricading the house.
A flat "no" comes across as oppositional.
On the other hand, "Well, that depends..." followed by an analysis of options and possible roadblocks (this is where the "no" is subtly injected), that's construed as thoughtful and methodical. I would even venture to say that "It depends" is the only correct answer for an engineer to give to any question.
You can say no just because you oppose everything. That's oppositional. Or you can say no to almost everything, because you think that all the focus should be on one thing, and you're trying to keep people from chasing after a bunch of distractions. That's not being oppositional, that's keeping focus.