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Comment by throwaway7865 | Hacker News Reader

I’m currently interviewing for jobs in Israel and their “straight talk” habit is honestly number one problem for me.

People never schedule meetings, they just ask for your phone number and call whether it’s appropriate for them. They interrupt you in the meetings, tell your solution is bad.

It may sound refreshing on paper, but honestly you feel treated like a low-skilled worker in a laundry or a kitchen. I’m not a Westerner, but I do come from a background of working with an English company and the difference in respect to boundaries and time is night and day.

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Radical honesty is something that I would appreciate and find quite refreshing.

Offensiveness just for the sake of being offensive and trying to make other people feel powerless around you, that kind of thing I would not appreciate.

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between these two.

Now, scheduling, I'm not quite as bad as the Germans, but I do require that stuff get put on the calendar, and you make a really strong effort to hold to that schedule.

If you think you can just call me whenever you want, then you can just fuck off. Not even my wife can just call me whenever she wants. Fortunately, she knows this.

I've worked in hi tech in Israel for 20 years and now have a completely international clientele that I work with, and I don't think Israelis in general are like that.

My general impression is that “corporate” structures may have some veneer of a professional workplace culture in Israel, but with startups all bets are off.

I felt like being at a bazaar where a stranger talks to you like a person they know all their life. Which probably sounds appealing for people tired of Western sugarcoating and is probably great at a party when drinks flow freely. But at workspace it just feels unprofessional and disrespectful.

Local friends explained to me that this is cultural. Workplace in Israel is catered to locals and they rarely hire outsiders or expats. People have very short distance, they serve in army together, go to parties together, hide from bombings together. So hierarchy and workspace mannerisms make little sense in that context.

Being Dutch might influence my take, but I love the no BS communication in Israel. What you describe as troublesome cuts both ways BTW. You are allowed to be as direct. Got no time? Say so. Got other priorities? Say so. Just be clear and to the point and do not waste the callers time with an elaborate story.

The explanation I got was that no one has time to beat around the bush since every single day might be your last.

That was 30 years ago when things where a lot less safe than it is now.

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