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> As an aside, there are elements of this sort of thing in Bay Area tech culture too.

The more general case of misaligned strength of a statement is widespread in other cultures as well.

E.g. I'm Norwegian, and it's not unusuals for Norwegians to use similarly soft language, though it's by no means universal. A statement like "perhaps it would be worth thinking about doing X?" will often mean "do X" or "do X right now!", and where you lie on the range from the literal meaning on one end and a direct order with an implied threat on the other extreme, may hinge on subtleties of intonation, which words are emphasised, and/or the personality and your relationship with the other person.

I live in the UK now, and my impression is that the same is true here but to a much lesser extent, and will then often be phrased in ways that may be easier to recognise by either being overly formal and/or wrapped in a layer of sarcasm.

> I live in the UK now, and my impression is that the same is true here but to a much lesser extent

I worked for a client once who had units in NL and BE, and a UK supplier. We had a short meeting once, it went like so:

> Architect(BE): I have an idea, let's do X!

> Developers(BE): OK boss!

> Developers(NL): Terrible idea. No way we're doing X. Let's do Y!

> Supplier(UK): Well X is interesting. None of our customers do X. But, it is possible!

BE thought X was a good idea, developers questioned it but an architect outranks them. NL thought they decided to do Y, and work on it will start the moment the meeting ends. UK thought they were very very clear not to ever do X.

As if there weren't good enough reasons to agree and circulate meeting outcomes, these kinds of things make them invaluable...

Okay, here’s what I’m wondering: How do you urge people to do discoveries or try things out when you’re reviewing something?

e.g. Do you think it would be better if we used a queue system here? Oh, no, I can try it but I had issues with blah blah etc.

One way would be to ask for an update before we make a decision. By making an explicit statement that a decision will be taken in the future you're making it clear that this wasn't the decision.

Another would be to be explicit about asking for them to conduct an experiment or test, as those would unambiguously not be intended to be a final solution.

But you might then well find that the request to carry out an experiment to do X will sound equally nebulous. But at least it's clear you're not being told it's a decision to do X.

Practically change the scope of work to make an experiment to find which way is better. Though, come to think of it, then they’re likely to get mad at me for requesting extra work. Well, we just need to communicate more.

Extra politeness of mid-west sometimes before a hurdle in business process development, because it really slows down the brainstorming phase. And then companies end up with software that doesn’t serve their needs because someone didn’t feel like talking and we didn’t have the whole month to design a single screen.

Why is it hard to directly ask them to try something? Is it because you subconsciously realize you're actually just piling extra work on top of them for variable benefit?

They’re just accepting the proposed solution without any elaboration or participation, because they take the question as a hidden request to do it in a particular way.

Let me give you an example. Working on developing a particular business process, we’re evaluating alternatives, and I introduce something else that wasn’t there before because we’re still in the brainstorming phase. The team tends to just jump on it immediately as if they’re told to do it that way. While trying to be polite, they’re accidentally removing the value adding step, and this persists even when they’re asked directly, we’re in mid-west.

I suspect that a lot of this form of cultural subtlety is designed to be hard on purpose. This allows individuals to show off and spar on a fairly harmless linguistic level - "he is so suave, she conveys her meaning just so" etc. Effectively it is a way to show off verbal + emotional intelligence in a way that doesn't look like showing off, since it's all about politeness.

The fact that it makes it hard for foreigners to productively engage is just a side benefit of the arrangement.

My take on “Hard on purpose” is that it’s plausible deniability. It’s not for showing off, it’s to make the situation polite in a way that you can’t rationally attribute malice.

More generally, perhaps, leaving an out for either party to avoid losing face in the case one side wants to contest a statement or pull back from a stance.

Norwegian culture is big on compromise - we see that even in politics, where it's not uncommon for a party that often has 12-15 parties represented to negotiate settelements that gets the support of 10+ parties even if only half of them are needed for a majority, for example, because it's often seen as preferable to pushing through a bigger change with narrower support.

And compromises feel like they are easier to reach when positions are couched in "maybe"'s that leaves plenty of rooms to adjust or pull back without losing face.

In a sense that of course is plausible deniability for the harder position, but not because they necessarily object to people thinking that is what you want, but ensure not to give the impression you're unconditionally committed to it.

I don't know if this is always good - sometimes it is, but it also does mean that it's easy for things to end up being endlessly debated in cases where people latch on to language that leaves the door open for "polite disagreement" more than it perhaps ought to.

Politics is the absolute peak of this kind of culture. You never know when you might need a favor down the road so it's best to be friends with anyone even just marginally aligned with your platform. Going beyond the minimum compromise keeps everyone happy enough to remember it. Politics is like dealing with a dozen different prisoners dilemmas every day. You could act in self-interest but you still need a majority vote or the consensus of your underlings to actually get the work done.

In the US, we've kinda swung back on the prisoner's dilemma. GOP finally figured out that they don't need to worry about bipartisanship or even having the consensus of their entire party. Turns out, if you've got the all three branches of government under control, you can just do whatever you'd like.

There are definitively social games which are about showing that you have been initiated into the social codes of your class, but I don't know that this is one of them.

If that's true, than the theories that "Autism is the next form of human evolution" seem far more true.

Shit tests are demonic and should be rooted out from the human psyche.

> Something that drives me nuts is someone writing on a code review "you may want to consider using the X data struct here" and meaning "I will not merge this code until you use X"

The former language is appropriate when there is a specific problem to be solved and X seems to be a good solution. This language doesn't rule out other approaches that also solve the problem. (It should probably be accompanied by a good description of the problem.)

Saying the latter would be fairly rude since it implies that you think an ultimatum was required to get compliance. I'd instead phrase it as "X data struct should be used here." It is still clear about the correct way of doing things and carries less baggage.

Is there an app in Iran similar to Uber / Grab / Go? Wonder how the drivers and riders react to that.