Comment by cdavid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdavid | Hacker News Reader

A crucial point not mentioned yet: cross cultural issues.

In an American culture, it is "self-evident" that clear communication is about being direct and to the point. But this is far from universal. More generally, western cultures tend to conflate earnest and truth. "Telling it like it is" is valued. We don't realize our own "phoniness".

I have witnessed countless times people hitting a wall in meetings and other situations because they tried to address the point "butt head". Some typical examples I've witnessed

1. French/Japanese starting a simple resource discussion. As we French typically do, French manager starting a negotiating by saying no. Gradually softening while getting given more information. Result: French manager happy at the end, happy to start project, Japanese manager extremely stressed and thought nothing was decided.

2. American engineer excited about a starting project, mentioning how "awesome" things are. French engineer unimpressed, 50 % stuff not working, think the American is bulsshiting him, decides they can't be trusted. American just wanted to share his enthusiasm and wanted to build a working relationship. I was that French engineer long time ago, I really was super confused by American optimism. I thought it was all fake, I since learnt to tune and update my mental model :)

In all those cases, everybody thought they were very clear. I now work in Japan, and what Japanese would call very clear is very different from what we would consider clear in Europe or the US.

I'd say this is a solid portion of the reason. Ideally, we could talk about software in a completely neutral and dispassionate way without worrying about how the recipient will receive the information, or what the potential implications on ourselves are; this is the idea behind no-blame retros and psychological safety, etc. The fact is that a lot of work cultures are not in a state where this works, so even if people might be naturally inclined to do this, they may have been trained not to.

The other big piece of it is... communicating is a messy activity. I'm always amazed how often you can think people are aligned on something, then dig in a little farther and realize that people have wildly divergent ideas of what's going on. It's exacerbated when you have folks who are operating in a second language (this isn't a slight on them, I have nothing but admiration for anybody working as a software dev in a second language - I don't know if I could do it TBH).

>The other big piece of it is... communicating is a messy activity. I'm always amazed how often you can think people are aligned on something

I wonder if this is a bug, or a feature, if you will. Maybe the random distribution of variations in our understandings is an essential part of working as a team.

Let’s say, every ant is trained to react by spitting acid as a XOR: if A or B, but not A and B, attack!

If the social behavior is not a function of the rules, but more driven by whether a given ant believes {A, B}, and this varies in some distribution, I can imagine some interesting outcomes. Perhaps…

One ant accidentally believes A ~B. That is their sensory input but not the truth. They accidentally hit a beetle, score! Wildcard ant! You get to reproduce.

Not clear if that thought experiment extends into cultural differences. I’d say that means different rules, in my take.

But within one group with the same rules, a distribution of different and even wrong information seems like an advantage.

Maybe not for that one poor schmuck who wrongly believed A and B, and got his head bitten off. But antmortized we’re probably all better off.

I'm an American and I think one mistake we Americans make is that we think we are very direct, but there is a lot of indirectness in some of our communication habits. This is particularly true in other parts of the country. As a native born midwestern, there are some indirect habits there and I'd say the west coast as its own too. So we're mostly direct, but there is some indirectness that we are at times blind to.

We're usually direct when we're positive, so long as it doesn't cost us anything.

Try to get a direct negative response in USA, good luck.

I only realized the indirectness of my second sentence after I wrote it.

Good observation about positive directness vs negative indirectness! I agree 100%.

As a mildly autistic person who grew up in the Midwest, my understanding is that it is not at all direct haha. East coast is much more abrasive and easier to get. If someone things you’re an ass they’ll let you know. And you can let them know why they’re wrong in a loud back-and forth. Then laugh and get a drink.

In the Midwest people are too polite to say anything. Many midwesterners will bear an annoyance for years before speaking up as they are afraid of offending.

On the west coast if you’re an ass people will just stop interacting with you. You just won’t be invited anymore. The lack of interaction is the interaction.

The east coast/west coast is super striking. A few American friends were surprised when I told them I thought East/West coast divide was wider than e.g. NY/France, culture-wise. New York always felt like a more culturally diverse, bigger, English speaking Paris.

When I am in Japan, there is an obvious "this is not Kansas anymore" aspect. I love it, I lived there > 10 years but I don't need any effort to know I am like a fish out of the water.

On the other hand, California or Texas are still just unsettling, in an "uncanny valley" / twilight zone kind of way. Everything is "almost" the same, but yet so many small things that add up to a strange feeling. I guess American from a western culture background would feel the same when coming to Europe ? Not sure.

I have always felt there is a phoniness to west coast social interactions. There is both an indirectness and fake happiness that I find very jarring. On the east coast, particularly New York, people almost relish in their negativity, but at least they are clear about how they feel (typically).

I once spent a weekend in San Jose as a European, and it was a deeply unsettling experience for me. I've met my share of narcissistics in my time, but not what I'd describe was a whole town full of them. Everyone exhuded an aura of extreme self-importance, confidence, and deliberate grace. It was like walking on the surface of an alien planet.

It took me heading back to an LA bus station and interacting with the random people there to feel that I was among real people again.

As an American, I expected a big difference in Europe, but it felt kinda like an older, smaller town. New Orleans feels very European. And my point is that it’s distinct, and you know what it is that you’re feeling.

The mind fucking thing you’re talking about, the “uncanny valley,” is Canada. Vancouver is so much like Seattle, or any other US city in some ways, but there’s something off that you can’t quite explain. There are small details that are just wrong.

As someone who grew up in the Midwest and currently living on the East coast, I always get a little pissed off when I hear this trope. People in the Midwest are honest and just genuinely nice and friendly. Politeness to me has performative connotations. Most of my peers from back home talk like sailors.

I think rural vs suburban vs urban mannerisms might be a confounding variable here as well. I'm from the suburbs.

It's all stereotypes. As I've done more therapy though I just realize that all the people that I know from the midwest really /really/ don't want to open up about how they are feeling. It isn't about swearing or being a part of 'polite society', it's about not addressing perceived issues interpersonally or in a group dynamic.

Like I just see from my hometown near Minneapolis that people would rather just act like uncomfortable things aren't happening or don't exist. They put on a smile and act all nice to each other but secretly there's all this shit that they harbor against one another. It is definitely a small-town thing too though. In a small town the people you are around have been there for a long time and they are going to be there for a long time in the future, so one way to cope with disagreement is to paper it over. Just not my personally favorite interaction style.

German here living in Sweden. The description sounds very much like Swedish/ Nordic behavior/mentality. And don’t many people in Minnesota actually have Scandinavian heritage?

Yes, but Minnesotans actually have a higher % of German heritage than Scandinavian.

> As a mildly autistic person who grew up in the Midwest, my understanding is that it is not at all direct haha.

Have you heard americans talking about their digestion? You go to the bathroom? What are you doing there?

Biggest source of conflict I've seen is when an American who thinks they're direct meets someone who actually is.

Hm. I am an American, but maybe that American optimism stuff explains some friction I have had at work. I find that being optimistic when important things aren't working is stupid and increases risk.

Us frenchmen, on a world scale, tend to be direct, realist and pessimist. So american optimism is really jarring at first until you get used to it.

I went on a cruise and met some Canadians (they told me). I noticed they were speaking French and said “Is that French you’re speaking?” “Yes.” “That’s really cool! What part of Canada are you from?”

“The part that speaks French.”

I just frowned and walked off as it was meant to be a polite question. An educated guess would have said that they were from “the French speaking part of Canada,” but I guess they didn’t like small talk.

In hindsight, I find that interaction funny.

I wouldn't be able to tell if they were being cheeky or avoiding small-talk in that instance.

I could be wrong but as a Non-French speaker I've heard that French banter is a little snide or pedantic in nature on purpose but generally not meant to be mean-spirited. Kind of like when a friend says "No Shit Sherlock" but with less enthusiasm.

Their facial expressions said they were annoyed with me, but I could have been mistaken!

Also they're forgetting than Québec is not the only french speaking area of the country!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language_in_Canada

Your say "direct", but in my experience French business communication is ridiculously convoluted, bordering on the baroque.

"Dear Sir,

I hope this message finds you well and in good spirits.

Would it be possible to arrange a meeting by telephone in the near future, perhaps even the next week, if that fits with your calendar?

I would shame myself if I neglected to mention that I will prepare the requested documents at the earliest convenience."

Is how I can only describe it.

Ah yes. Any sort of official French written communication is drowned in this sort of drivel.

I think an optimistic look at important things being broken is that you have an opportunity to learn more about those things, and make changes both to fix it and avoid the same problem again.

That's more reasonable, but it's not (AFAICT, anyway) the kind of optimism being discussed as "American optimism".

Fully agree with this. As a south american woman working in a multi-cultural company, I have a very direct and passionate way of speaking, which tends to mean I can easily dominate conversations and "intimidate" a lot of my co-workers from other countries.

That's why I try to be mindful of this; there's dozens of tools one can use to have effective communication. Begging the question, starting with a negative assumption, playing devil's advocate, etc. The key to good comms is a) have empathy for the person you're speaking to, and b) assume they're just as competent and well-intentioned as you are.

Fairly odd, as I've interacted with south american women before in both a professional and non professional setting and there have been those that were passionate in speaking and those that weren't. Usually those impassionate were more experienced in their profession. So it has nothing to do with ethnic culture. Op is just attempting a racial profiling, and attributing management styles to that. Pretty appalling and shows inexperience both in management and people skills.

> In all those cases, everybody thought they were very clear. I now work in Japan, and what Japanese would call very clear is very different from what we would consider clear in Europe or the US.

There was an anecdote (non-verified story) about this going around a few years ago.

A Big Company in Japan was expecting the big boss to come in and tell them what the plans were for the next year. A meeting was arranged with the smaller bosses. Big boss told them the plan and everyone just nodded and agreed that it was a great plan.

Big boss leaves.

There is a second meeting among the small bosses where they try to figure out wtf did big boss actually mean with his speech. It is culturally frowned upon to ask questions or admit you don't understand.

That's a good point, but tangential to OP's question

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