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Comment by vadym909 | Hacker News Reader

Its an American cultural norm- which often seems 'fake' or 'posing' to Europeans, S.Americans or Asians who are little more reserved and stingy expressing such levels of sentiment.

It was a shock to me when I started interviewing for jobs- and an American friend told me, its very important in the US, when interviewing to say "I'm really excited (more than you really are) about the opportunity to work at XYZ." The truth could be you hate the company or are ambivalent- but if you don't say you are absolutely excited- the assumption is you are not interested and therefore will be passed over for someone who is 'truly excited'.

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I applied for a job with an American software multi-national a few months back. I received an automated email claiming that they were "excited" by my interest in the role. Six weeks passed without any contact whatsoever from them, after which I received an automated rejection email, which began: "Dear [redacted], We've really enjoyed getting to know you!"

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that they had any obligations to me, but to my European sensibilities, the blatant insincerity of those emails borders on the offensive.

I lived in Germany for two years and spent a lot of that time talking to natives, as well as students and refugees from around the world. When I returned home to my native America, I was put off by how over-the-top positive people were.

I get it that when you say “how are you” in America, people are usually not asking how you are actually doing. I think I surprised a few people by telling them about all the things that were going wrong that day.

Does anyone else get wrong-footed by these little niceties too?

I feel the the kind of "being excited" makes me feel strange

Not saying they are bad, but strange

Feels like a substitute of "the real thing"

Well I don't encounter this often so I can't explain it better

Not really. Pleasantries are common all over the world.

If you've ever spent time in Latin America then you'd know it's rude not to ask anyone how they are before engaging in any sort of conversation. The Middle East (i.e East Asia) has very similar mannerisms.

Engaging in these pleasantries signals I view you as a person rather than you are just a means to an end.

It's the literal equivalent of foreplay before sex.

It's not the performing of pleasantries, but the level at which Americans perform them vs the norm in most of western Europe.

The average level of American "OMG so excited to meet you" is usually reserved for actual celebrities in Europe. When you have seen them talk like that to everyone in the room, the conclusion for the European is that the American is lying about being excited to meet you, which is much more offensive than if they just said "pleased to meet you".

> The average level of American "OMG so excited to meet you" is usually reserved for actual celebrities in Europe

I've been an American all my life, and I've never seen anyone say they were excited to meet someone other than either an actual celebrity or someone who has been significantly talked up in advance to the level of being at a quasi-celebrity level in context (and even in the latter case, “I'm glad to finally meet you”, possibly followed by an explanation of the reason they've been looking forward to it, is much more common than expressions of excitement.)

Honestly, the behavior you seem to be describing is one which would strike most Americans as both unusual and deeply disingenuous.

Things are very different from one part of USA to another, and even from one social group to another. Though I haven't participated in any social situation where "OMG so excited..." is the norm, it is easy to imaging it exists.

my experience (as us-born/bred) is that this exists, but is more a personality trait than anything else. And some personality traits can co-exist among others with the same trait more easily, and that 'so excited' outward expression can often get amplified in a group, but even individuals can be like that. I don't see it as uniquely American, but... it may be somewhat here. By comparison, traveling in Russia, public displays of enthusiasm/positivity/emotion were far less common at all (although in small groups of friends they came out).

> The Middle East (i.e East Asia)

You mean West Asia? East Asia is the Far East; that's the whole point of using the term "the Middle East" for what was originally just "the East".

Yep, my bad.

> I get it that when you say “how are you” in America, people are usually not asking how you are actually doing.

That’s not quite right, it usually is really asking that question, however, the space of acceptable responses (both in range of acceptable tones and maximum level of detail) varies widely based on context and relationship with the questioner. You are usually safe treating it as if it were an empty ritual to which the correct response is “fine, and you?” (unless it is already being echoed back to you), but that's not quite what it is in most situations.

Yep. I definitely got passed over in job interviews because I didn't act excited enough for the job. I was plenty interested, but I didn't act over-the-top about it. On the other hand, one time I was very interested in the product because I used it all the time, and the interviewer was like "well, I see you've done your homework" - as if truly being interested was impossible.

Similar I think. They want you invested in it, excited, willing to join their poxy social friday stuff, and out of the box thinker who is willing to stand your ground and shake things up - but crucially not going to challenge them. You can't have both but they think they can.

I moved to the bay from Australia and I thought everyone was being sarcastic for a long time. The use of "quite" to mean "very good" not "passive aggressive barely enough", and how people talk up their accomplishments also came up.

Made me really appreciate how hard it must be to come here from a culture that is actually very different (inc language), and not just a few small idiosyncrasies.

(Brit here)

It seems like being excited or happy isn't enough anymore, you have to be super excited or super happy.

To me it all boils down to demand and offer. If they had to get 3 people, and there were just 10 of them all over the world, they suddenly wouldn't give a damn about the applicant being super excited, mildly excited or boringly unexcited.

OT, but as a non-American I have always wondered what are the origins of those "smiling, teeth slightly showing" corporate mugshots? And I've started to see these from other places as well (like in my own country), of late.

An example (this stuck with me as I had seen it in an article years ago): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjay-jha-a91240b9

Then, there's this aspect that creeps me out is when you pass someone and you get that fake, as if it's mandatory, "pulled cheek" smile (My HRs do that as well). It just reduces the value of a smile to nothing.

I liked it that when I was backpacking in Europe nobody usually gave me that mandatory non-smile smile.

European here. I usually stay away from people who smile with their face but not their eyes; that's a sign they're not sincere. I mean not the half smile put there just to avoid a neutral expression, but a smile that attempts to appear warm and deep while it's not. Especially at work, the more the people I met who were good at it, the more I did my best not to have to deal with them, because to be good at it they must have trained it, which to me spoke volumes about the person.

As an aside, if you want to make a genuinely warm smile but are not feeling it, this trick usually works for me. I think about my partner, or a beloved childhood memory, or something else along those lines. I just close my eyes for a second and focus on that, then let my face smile while I think about the happy memory.

I have never used those words during an interview. Yes, people use those words often and genuinely mean it more often in America than in other places. No, you will not get the job if your interviewer thinks that you're lying!

I noticed something similar with expressing gratitude - I feel like Americans are much more likely to write things like "Thank you for your amazing work on this!" or "Thanks so much, that's extremely helpful!". Sometimes it makes it a bit hard to tell whether people really think you did a good job or whether it's just pleasantries. I think it's generally meant in a friendly way though, and I have started to be a bit more expressive with thanks as well (though only when I mean it).

The one that at first confused and now bugs me:

> [Hands over coffee or some other trivial but thankable thing]

> Thanks.

> You're so welcome!

Same in this part of Asia. Companies are 'pleased' to notify that they have fired so and so on misconduct.

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