Comment by Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL
5 years ago
Quite a lot of US culture can come off as phony to (Eastern) Europeans. Friend of mine went to the US for a business schooling event and said people were completely incapable of honest criticism. They would sugar coat criticism under 10 layers of phony praise. He was the only one who actually said something was bad outright, if someone gave a bad presentation. He attributed it to cultural difference. Guess it is related to what Americans think is friendly / unfriendly behavior.
It's tough to navigate Americans. They're super friendly, but often I feel like it's their version of "being polite" and not more.
Just yesterday I read https://idlewords.com/2018/12/gluten_free_antarctica.htm which is pretty amusing, and I recommend reading. Quoting the most relevant (to this discussion) part from it:
> “Can I ask you something? How come the Russians never smile? I’ve never seen them smiling.”
> “They’re at work. They're Russians.”
> "Is it normal for them to eat without talking to one another?”
> “This is their job. They get 20 minutes to eat.”
> “Yeah, but they never smile. Are they happy?”
> Are the Russians happy? Is anyone happy? Can one ever truly be said to be happy?
> I am tempted to go full Slav on Conor, to explain to him how we are all just grains of dust suspended in the howling void, searching for meaning in the fleeting moments before we are yanked back to the oblivion from whence we emerged, naked and screaming. But for all his faults he's just a kid stuck spending his summer microwaving Yorkshire puddings for difficult people. I take pity.
> “Russians are formal. It would be weird of them to act relaxed on duty. They are all smiling on the inside.”
Americans are pessimists masquerading as optimists, Russians are optimists masquerading as pessimists.
A pessimist is a realistic optimist.
Pessimism is prediction + sadness, not optimism + realism.
[Americans] would sugar coat criticism under 10 layers of phony praise
It really annoys the hell out of me. What’s wrong with just saying what’s wrong?
The last example here on HN was a web version of flutter, where everyone was like “it’s amazing, so awesome, much controls” and only four comment levels deeper someone noted that it’s an utter crap that stutters at scroll on top hardware, cannot select text, cannot zoom, etc etc, so google reps had to start damage control.
And I wouldn’t even mind this positivity, if it didn’t put landmines in what you choose for daily use. Everything is so amazing and awesome, they love it, and when you try/buy it, it’s just a half-functioning crap that you have to finish yourself or wait until they do. As if these awesome’rs didn’t do anything beyond reading a tutorial. How can you relate positively to something that spent your days of learning and experimenting and in the end turned out to be a joke?
This is also a big annoyance for me. I regularly interact with people of different cultures, and find that interpreting feedback is something I have to context switch for often, always needing to remember whom I am speaking with.
My native culture is quite straightforward in how things are phrased. As such, I find it easy to work with e.g. Germans, who routinely use phrases such as "this is unacceptable" in feedback. Which doesn't mean anything horrible, it just means that the specific thing being discussed is, in its current state, unacceptable for the final product. But Americans would likely phrase the same feedback as "needs some work". If American feedback includes "unacceptable" then you've probably really messed up.
The most difficult part is recognizing when Americans are genuinely impressed by something. Since regular positive feedback is full of "this is amazing" and "we love it" (thing that would just get a "this is good" at home), it's hard for me to recognize when something has really exceeded expectations and they really do love it.
Just to add another perspective, as an American living in Germany, I often find that the German criticism of American optimism/interpersonal warmth is extremely paranoid. I have heard so many Germans describe American "niceness" as "fake", but I don't think the American approach is rooted in dishonesty as it's sometimes assumed by outsiders. For instance, Germans will be shocked if they go to the US, and a stranger starts a conversation with them waiting in line at the convenience store with a lot of warmth and curiosity. As I understand, to them this reads as the approach of someone who wants to con them or trick them, putting on the guise of un-earned closeness. But Americans in my experience just give interpersonal warmth a bit more freely, and are more willing to have friendlier interactions with someone they don't know, with no expectation that the relationship will last longer than the time both of you are standing in line, while that type of warmth and friendliness will be reserved for close friends and family in other cultures. As someone who grew up in American culture, it's not "fake" or forced when I smile to a stranger, or congratulate them on the new grandchild they just told me about in our first meeting. It's just part of the culture, and it's something which I enjoy to give and receive in these random, short interactions throughout the week.
And when it comes to work criticism, I agree that there is some value in what would be considered "blunt feedback" by American standards, and that Americans are sometimes too hesitant to give it. At the same time, I think this also comes from a different cultural approach which is also valid. Americans have deeply rooted ideals for independence and self determination, and a general sense of optimism. I think the default position when someone is showing you a piece of work is often to assume that they have it under control, and that it would be presumptuous to tear down a piece of work someone else owns and that you are seeing for the first time. By focusing on praising the best elements of the work, you are giving your colleague feedback on what they should focus and expand on, and you are leaving it up to them to discover the flaws in their work and resolve them in their own way. So you would reserve direct criticism for times when you think there is a critical misunderstanding in the basic direction of the work which will prevent the correct result from being reached.
And you can cliticise the American approach all you want, and I will be the first to admit that it does lead to a lot of problems and blind-spots. But as someone who has worked in the US and in Germany, my experience is that American companies move and innovate a lot quicker than German ones by focusing on potential rather than flaws, and that trend seems to have been borne out if you look at the major innovations which have come out of each country in the last 30 years.
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In America, you criticise by not mentioning the bad stuff in my experience. To know, what is bad is basically an exercise left to the reader. If there isn't enough praise beyond a certain threshold, you better think hard, where you messed up. Of course, this is rather extreme and people do point out what "needs work" etc. but if you think about it in this extreme way, you will get to useful insight quicker.
In general, being frank online is hard but useful. We don't here the tone in written language, which often leads to tensions. Everybody, who really strives to do something well will struggle with the general incompetence of people to do anything well it seems, tons of half finished work and broken basically everything you think should be long explored fully. Just look at the world wide web and all the half broken and half implemented standards.
I have the feeling, that the Germans I interact with are verbally less expressive/ tend to use less intricate language constructs and subtle variations compared to the Czechs I know. That doesn't mean they are somehow less intelligent (because they definitely are not) or that they are less hearty (because again, they are quite the opposite). I do know some Americans that are genuinely very nice, caring people too and yes, they tend to use more of that positive vocabulary compared to the way we communicate in middle Europe.
> It really annoys the hell out of me. What’s wrong with just saying what’s wrong?
In their minds, they probably are. Why can't the whole world have a singular word to address the second party, as in English, but require multiple levels of deference? I suspect the reasons are related: they're communication patterns that are hard to dispel. And as long as there's no need, people simply keep them up.
Subtleties are also difficult. If an English person say what you did was great, it most likely wasn't. And if they say it was not bad, it may have been great...
That reverse psychology!
That's a great story. Thank you for sharing. :)