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Comment by CodeBeater | Hacker News Reader

I wholeheartedly second this. I have an unique lens on this issue as I'm in a unique spot. Despite being Brazilian myself, for most of my career I worked and managed US based developers, and just very very recently shifted to working directly with Brazilians. I saw no major difference in responsiveness and "get shit done" (aka initiative) between those two cohorts.

The only thing that took me by surprise is that Brazilians DO NOT take well to getting busy outside of working hours. If you text someone during their lunch break, expect to hear a complaint along with your response.

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Why should someone be happy to deal with work stuff outside of work hours? It seems to be a thing in the US, but not in Europe or other places.

I agree with you, nobody should. But what took me by surprise was that they get angry even about their headspaces. For instance, sending someone a text and saying "don't worry about this until you're back from your break" will yield little to no effect, as they value being completely disconnected from work during any hours they're not being paid for.

Which I think is perfectly reasonable.

I think the problem there is that in toxic workplaces that can be "don't worry about this until you're back from your break wink wink" and in reality you are expected to get it done.

I don't live in LATAM but I have every work device switched off and stowed away during the night, and weekends. I'm not getting paid to do overtime or to be on-call so why would I? I think this should be the normal for everyone. You can't be on 24/7 else you'll pay for it with your health.

> For instance, sending someone a text and saying "don't worry about this until you're back from your break" will yield little to no effect, as they value being completely disconnected from work during any hours they're not being paid for.

That's interesting. As someone who works from Poland with US companies, this is opposite of what I do. There is little common time despite me being very much not a morning person, so I think giving ~20 minutes of my evening by responding to people in US is very reasonable.

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