35 karma · joined May 31, 2018
All of these things can be worked around, but the alternatives are slower paced and less efficient and leave you ultimately out of the loop. So it's not a problem of imagination, it's a problem of wanting to be able to keep up with what's going on.
The customer is always right attitude is one that I appreciate Americans having. While not as bad in Australia as some parts of Europe, the attitude here is definitely closer to "give me your money and and leave" than "what can I do to ensure you leave happy?"
If someone is learning a language for fun, I'd recommend starting off with one with a lot of shared vocabulary with your native language. French for English speakers is a good start. Much better than German (despite English itself being a Germanic language). Even as someone who's only exposure to French was a couple of Michel Thomas cassette tapes; I understand a surprising amount of a French newspaper. I studied German in high school and I understand virtually nothing in a newspaper in comparison.
I worked for a well known defense force contractor and worked under someone who was put on a PIP. The PIP was just a formality in the overall scheme of things as they couldn't fire them without putting them through one first. It was a death march with no chance of success. It was hard hearing them go through it as they were a nice enough person, just not at all suited to the role they were in. In short, PIPs were not seen as methods to actually get an employee back on track in their current role or another one; they were already fired, it's just got a ~12 month notice.
In another organisation a coworker of mine was absolutely useless and were put on a PIP. They genuinely tried to get them back on track and the PIP lasted for a very long time and even renewed their contract when they had a perfect opportunity to let them go. Ultimately they weren't fired directly, when their contract came to its end they put the job up for applications and they didn't win it back. I didn't find out about their PIP until years after the fact and TBH I wish the team knew about it. For all this time we thought they were getting away with their terrible work ethic.
I've always found it curious how asians are treated as honorary whites when it comes to talking about diversity in American companies. This is the most egregious example.
If you go to Google's own diversity report the breakdown becomes 36.3% asian and 53.1% white. Considering white people maybe up like three quarters of the population in the US they're actually under represented at Google, ironically.
Report: https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_our-workforce