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> Cultures are hard and take a lot of mutual respect to work through.

It's always beneficial, not only when dealing with people of other cultures, to adhere Postel's law [0]: "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle

Ah! Never drew the parallel, but being an uber-introvert with no desire to be involved in any social conflict for the rest of my life, I naturally gravitated toward that behavior.

“When people grow tired, they call it wisdom”.

I notice if the majority behaves like this, then it could take a long time to build trust and stronger relationships in the team. Having a few not very self-conscious people around, is they are not too way out of bounds, helps to break the ice.

I remember taking a doing-biz-international course - one thing that was stressed was that personal space is different for different cultures, you can back someone into a wall if your normal speaking distance is larger than someone else's.

FYI for Americans a good rule of thumb is that Americans are comfortable at roughly an arm's length - reach out and touch someone's shoulder with your knuckles - after taking that course this became a company greeting ....

I find a lot of comfort in knowing that these kinds of things are becoming more "official". Training seminars being organised, issues being discussed online, people growing up and spending more time being aware of these things before it's too late. It seems to me to be a sure sign of social progress.

I took that course in 1985 ....

> reach out and touch someone's shoulder with your knuckles - after taking that course this became a company greeting ....

This greeting might not be perceived too well in Germany.

Just don't do it with fingers outstretched

Yeah in the Southern US there is a good chance if you reach out and touch someone with your knuckles they will think you are looking for a fight. If it's someone you are very comfortable with it would probably be taken as "playing we might fight" like you would do with a cousin or brother but probably don't do this lol.

People who go to HR over this...

I am French and I work in China with a lot of Indians. It's been interesting for everyone to say the least. I swear and speak my mind way too much for a corporate Indian, so much that when I spoke frankly to someone higher than me telling him his process was useless and was going double our wasted time for really only the appearance of regulatory compliance, all he could say was ... thank you. He d never met a younger subaltern resist a stupid idea in India before, in public :D

And of course it's neither our faults: in a French company we spend maybe more time fighting each other than doing the work, while in India they double their wasteful process every 2 weeks to a point they all do their job well but produce nothing at all :D

I've worked in France, US and Finland (all that is super subjective). In France you talk and take informal breaks all the time. In US you occasionally take a long break with a colleague. In Finland the breaks were organized and everybody took them (some food, tea, coffee). TBH I prefer the Finnish way. I'm fine with the US one, but I dread the French way.

What you describe as the "Finnish way" seems like it would translate better to a distributed company. I've been working remotely for over a year now, and I've found that those serendipitous conversations by the coffee-machine "French way" breaks just don't happen remotely.

I don't have much experience with remote besides COVID and it was in US so I have no idea of the cultural differences.

I would love to work in European international corporation acknowledging and respecting different introvert/extrovert personality levels, countless languages, completely different approaches in handling problems and challenges determined by one's origin and upbringing, different needs in socializing, e.g. Nokia at its peak. I dislike the American corporate environment, their soulless "corporate culture" media materials. There is this one American school of "how to become successful" and that's it. Productivity of a generation of Europeans is getting wasted on following some motivational bollocks by people after dozen of plastic surgeries and living in Florida or California.

> I dislike the American corporate environment, their soulless "corporate culture" media materials. There is this one American school of "how to become successful" and that's it.

Ironically, a lot of people in the European country in which I live feel this way about domestic companies compared to the vibrancy of US corporate culture. Maybe you can elaborate on what you're referring to, preferably with less generalizing of a whole continent of corporate cultures as "European?"

Yeah but european companies dont exist, we re all different.

Im French for instance, and we certainly dont work like the german. For us it s all about the game, the gossips, the fightings. Everyone is the CEO and it s hard to remember we have a job to do end of the day.

In Germany I ve heard things are more...rule following.

I work in China now - it's way more result oriented.

The corporate culture BS we have it everywhere, it s part of the internal marketing we all have to do, and it s not really american: it s a way to try and adapt to a workforce that doesnt only focus on the result but also the way it s achieved. And ofc, it s a shortcut, because beyond the surface there s nothing.

TL;DR dont idealize europe, it s a big place.

This is so right. There is no European culture. Even neighboring countries with similar values (NL and DE) are wildly different with regard to workplace.

I The Netherlands, work stops on Friday around 16:0-ish. In Germany, I had regular meetings at 18:00 on Friday. I honestly thought they were joking.

In Norway the office is desolate after 13:00 on a Friday. Only the youngest and the ones without children stick around till 16:00, and not many of them either.

Interesting. Is this because of officially shorter working hours per week, because of longer hours on the other weekdays, or just some kind of an unofficial practice? How common is this?

As another Nordic, I've seen people gladly leave the office around 15:00 or 16:00 (or earlier for some people if they like to start early) on a Friday, but it's hard to imagine people who are on the clock regularly leaving at 13:00 unless they are real early birds.

I can't speak for the parent poster, but I've never worked anywhere in Norway where there are that short Fridays. Sure, you could leave at 15, but then you'd have started at 7.

Seemed more an accepted and practical practice of trying to beat the traffic to their weekend mountain/coastal cabins. They are just shaving off an hour or two off their normal leaving time, and is somewhat seasonal and weather dependant as well.

I was just always amazed how quiet the office was on Friday afternoons during the years when I went back to working in Norway. Great for me as I got lots done during those hours. Or perhaps not great as I did not have a cabin to travel to...

Anecdotally having a Friday beer o'clock in the office does not work in Norway. Partly as they frown upon drinking at work... and also there is no-one left in the office.

If we're talking IT, don't you have at least some amount of night owls? In most places I've worked there were people that preferred starting their work around 10h - 12h, so an office would be rarely be completely empty even in the evening.

Really really depends on the company. I've heard the saying from Siemens people (which in Germany are regarded more like public officials, less like employees): "Freitag um eins macht jeder seins". Meaning no serious work is to be done after Fr 1300.

That company is on a different level. They have their own high schools and private education. Many executives are 'bred' in-house so they actually never even experience 'real life', but graduate from a Siemens high school and start climbing the corporate ladder straight after.

Yeah German corporations, especially industrial ones, can be really dark and sect-like from the perspective of an outsider. Education, intership, job, housing, insurances, life partner, retirement - everything. An entire life lived for a brand, brand owning a city and owned by a city. How far would one go to defend it as a part of one's identity?

It's not even really consistent within the US. Offices in (say) San Francisco, New York, and Atlanta will have very often different corporate cultures.

What did the Ukrainian do to make the American uncomfortable?

Anything ;)

Do you mean Indian instead of Hindu? In context of your post, it would seem Indian is what you meant, given you refer to everyone else by nationality.

I see it as a common conflation where people substitute Hindu (religion) with Hindi (language) with Indian (nationality/heritage).

But yes, as an Indian myself, we often have a different understanding of personal space and contact versus European/American cultures. It's not usually meant to be anything malicious, but it is very jarring in comparison.

As a Finn just the Google Image results of "Indian queue" make me anxious. I would never ever be that close to anyone in any situation unless forced.

If you want to improve your understanding about these sort of differences between cultures, I highly recommend reading "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer.

- A US lady came to hr complaining about an Ukrainian dev approaching them inappropriately during a party.

What was the inappropriate part? Seems useful to know.

> A Hindu pm had the habit of sitting next to developers while they worked

Some of us do this. Many don't. I don't like touching others especially in a work environment. It is definitely not a "hindu" thing, so much as an Indian thing.

I would chalk it up to lack of social awareness and no concept of space and personal boundaries. But, I don't think within our societies it is a bad thing.

However, with enough cultural trainings and awareness learnings, we do better at this when we interact with other cultures. The company I work for has a lot of documentation on this for almost all cultures.

Wtf is a "Hindu" pm?

I notice that, especially in some European countries, people conflate Hindu - Hindi - Indian.

I'm assuming it's some quirk of local language to English translations in addition to the conflating above.

I guess project manager

You mean respect for other cultures and sometimes unexpectedly different ways of living enabled better cooperation and good times?

Who'd have thought?

No intentional snark at this post. It was very interesting. But crikey ...