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East vs. West: Culture and Distributed Development
CowboyRobot writes "ACM's Queue has an article entitled, Culture Surprises in Remote Software Development Teams
that reviews differences in cultures and explores the impact they have on distributed software development teams. From the article: "In Western societies, decisions are made on the basis of input from those involved. In cultures with greater hierarchies, group members assume an authority will decide and they are only to enact the decision." Some stereotypes and some common sense, but I recognized myself in the descriptions of the 'typical American'."
When I first started reading the article, I figured they were talking about New York versus California. I've worked on bi-coastal projects, and the cultural differences in how things get decided (and even coding styles) are palpable.
Isn't this article just a nice way of saying that those in "Eastern" cultures can't think for themselves? That they're predisposed to follow orders, and are unsuitable participants in even a quasi-democratic system?
I'd imagine that some east-Asian Slashdotters might take issue with this.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
"...At the end of the videoconference, the Americans immediately disconnected the call. The French and Germans continued for another five minutes wishing a departing French teammate well in his retirement, and reminiscing about good times. The Europeans viewed the American behavior as rude and insensitive. The Americans viewed time as money, focusing on the cost of the videoconference. In other countries, entire meetings are devoted to establishing relationships, without conducting the core of the task at all."
Building relationships is a strong thing. Time is money but with a good repor you can get a lot more done easily. This is a time and money saver too. Just not as easily trackable of one. And not in the short term but over the long haul of a project. It especially great if the project is going to last severa years.
Evolution or ID?
These cultural differences aren't exactly minor, and I think they can have a real impact on how teams work together. I've worked in multicultural teams, and the way the team is built into a unit is by getting to know the individuals over time. This process happens much more easily when everyone is in the same team room working together.
Something that many companies don't seem to consider when they send jobs to other countries, or split the work between different teams in different countries is that without the face to face interaction it's much harder to get to know the other people. These cultural problems would show up in reduced productivity. Rather than being worked out and adjusted for, cultural differences would have a real chance of becoming a serious issue. It might look tempting to companies to send work out to cheaper countries, but the costs can be accrued in other ways than in just salaries.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
"East" and "West" are terrible descriptions. California is the most West, so it's kinda East. What about Hawaii? Australia? South Africa? The real difference is how old the society is. China has a very old society. So do Jews. Both societies are marked by lots of negotiation. Texas has a new society, as does Alaska, where individuals can get away with big moves. As societies gain collective experience, roles become established, forms have more persistence, communications are more complex and referential. While new societies take more risks, unencumbered by the lessons of past failures.
As "civilization" has generally moved West across Eurasia and the Americas, while largely surviving culturally in earlier establishments, the "East" (starting at the Asian Pacific coast) is older than the "West". Of course, major paradigm shifts and even genocides have distorted even that simple gradient. And the 20th Century's cataclysm migration and telecommunications means that the meme pool has a whirlpool, swirling the cultural codes around the globe. But actual mores are encoded deep. So there is a persistent ghost of the underlying gradient. Nowadays, individuals can choose how traditional or neo they want to be in their lives. And the lack of geographic rhyme and reason is making front lines of conflict everywhere, with new syntheses in every neighborhood. Let a thousand hydroponic flowers bloom!
--
make install -not war
India and China are VERY big places with MUCH diversity. But, I have developed some personal stereotypes based on experiences that I encounter time and time again.
Indians don't question authority, and actually have problems operating without it. They not only welcome being strictly regulated, they get stressed out in the absense of strict inflexible rules. The idea that one should question authority or make a decision that runs counter to what one has been told, never enters the thought process.
Chinese are trained to listen, not talk. The entire educational system is based on a one-way transfer of knowledge. The ideas of critical thinking and academic inquiry have to be LEARNED explicitly, and it seems to be the single greatest challenge for Chinese students in Western Universities.
Agreed. This is consistent the projection that not-so mind/cognative-intensive software work will continue to go overseas while the R&D/high-cognative software related work stays here....I personally don't feel much pity for the M$ visual basic ppl (ie, mega-corp software cogs) who whine about their job going overseas (let alone the gov't interfereing legistation to support that ideal).
While that may be partly true, it affects *everyone* in IT just about because everyone tries to get into "high-level design" aspect to escape being offshored. In other words, everyone moves to the high end of the Titanic. Even if you were already on the (now) high end before the iceburg, you are still crowded up the wazoo.
Table-ized A.I.
cragen
The difficulty of having Asian parents while growing up in an entirely American culture has been pretty evident... it's slightly different for every Asian-American, but from my experience and all my cousins (yes, all 15-20 of them) there's always been culture shock when it comes to girlfriends, spouses (don't get married 'til you're 28!), life decisions (you should be a doctor or a lawyer -- although at the time, software engineer was a respectable decision), and general parental control of your life. :-) Ask any Asian-American that grew up here about it, and chances are they've also been torn between the clear individualistic culture here and the clear group-oriented culture their parents came from and raised them to be.
And precious few books have been written about the subject, too... but that's starting to change. The Joy Luck Club was a start.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
I have worked with a few folks from India in my current position, and found that it is very important to draw them out and get their ideas. Initially, my suggestions were taken as direction and followed to the letter. While this is nice for my ego, it was not preferred. It is very rare that one person's idea is the best solution and is important to solicite other's opinions. On the other hand, it was nice to not have to argue about every little nit-picky thing too.
An interesting aspect that came out of this was the changes in the India nationals. The longer they were here, the more outspoken they become, and the better the teams began to operate. As it became apparent that their input was welcome, the suggestions stayed suggestions and when conflicting priorities came up, they were discussed and comprises were worked out. It became a much healthier environment, less re-work was done, and project items were done in better sequence.
I often wondered what difficulties arose when they finally went back to India. Did their new American-learned personality changes create problems, or were they quicly un-learned?
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The article doesn't talk about people moving to countries with different cultures and adapting to the culture of that country. Indians working in the US may behave slightly differently than Indians in India.
As an Indian who has worked in USA and Canada in addition to India, my experience about leadership is as follows.
0. The zeroth law. Anyone who has power will use it to protect his/her position. Principles, morals and ethics be damned. CYA is the best policy.
1. There is a streak of authoritarianism in almost every boss, however, there are subtle differences.
2. I couldn't access the article linked to above because of heavy traffic, but the line in the introduction that I didn't like was that in West this happens and in east that happens.
In my experience in India, the people who were involved were almost always consulted. I distinctly remember one obnoxious person who told me to code an entire system in 4 days. I am sure you (whether in East or West) can find similar examples.
Easterness and westernness is irrelevant to assholiness.
3. Indian and US bosses are more direct and more explicit. Canadians beat about the bush. To say "rake the leaves", Indians and Americans will say exactly so. The Canadians will say "The Fall has come a bit early this time."
This is stupid, needless, redundant and time-wasting sophistication.
4. We Indians criticize ourselves a lot. There are so many things wrong in our country (although in the recent past things have started to change). We are acutely conscious of this and know that each of us contributes to whatever's that's wrong and right.
So it is a sort of rule in Indian offices to criticize and make fun of the boss behind his/her back. The boss knows that too.
By contrast in Canada, I noticed two trends:
(a) The Canadians born and brought-up in Canada may criticize the boss vehemently amongst themselves, but when it comes to interacting with immigrants, they almost gang up and use very bland and inane language to describe a boss's shortcomings.
(b) No Canadian wants to be caught dead criticizing the top boss. We openly used to make fun of the CEO even. Infact, I'd even go so far as to say that Canadians almost want to be seen worshipping the top boss and singing paeans of him.
It is disgusting.
In my opinion, in general, there's more democracy in Indian and American workplaces than in Canadian.
Glad someone recognizes on here that American diversity is what makes us so strong. We are influenced both positively and negatively by every culture there is. I live in Phoenix, AZ. For population as diverse as we have here we do have very few problems. After 9/11 we had the one guy kill this sikh guy cause he was an ignorant red neck, something this country also has. After this happened there were rallies all over this city which includes Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, Scottsdale, Glendale, Chandler, and all the other smaller cities that are really all contained in this one valley. These rallies were not about hate, but about promoting diversity and truly people who have immigrated from all over, people that were born here directly descended from immigrants, and natives were all together learning from each other. I have a muslim friend here who once a month goes out with a couple of friends of hers and puts on an awareness night teaching about her beliefs. Back to the issue though, our culture relies on the people within it. In a company if you don't know how to help someone you direct them to someone else simply. I have delt with more than a few people providing support for Microsoft, Dell, and Gateway, some of them in India, some right here in the U.S. Besides the sometimes high language barrier they seem to have a problem with escalating. I don't think its a uniform form problem but my friend in Scotland has had a similar experience trying to get help from her ISP. You call them up and they won't know the answer to your problem cause well, you're a geek and only call when there is a real problem. The person on the other end will refuse to pass you on to someone else saying again and again "No, you are my customer" Like I said, I don't think this is uniform, but I wonder if its just a few idiots we've come across or if its a cultural no-no to ask someone else to help with a problem. Are companies there setup to frown on escalation? I don't know, I'm pretty understanding of a lot of cultures but the Indians I have for neighbors don't seem very friendly so I haven't been properly educated. My Korean best friend spent a lot of time teaching me about her religion and would often take me to eat at her brother's restaurant. I'll look forward to meeting an Indian with as must interest in educating me.
I have an interesting kneejerk reaction for an American, I stick up for the French. Perhaps this is influenced by living not too many doors down from the Marquis de Lafayette's local residence during the Revolution combined with childhood heros including Georges Guynemer and Roland Garros; not to mention possible bias from being able to trace my father's family back to Louis X (Ok, such a bad king that encyclopedias go staight from Louis IX to Louis XI) and hence back to Hugh Capet ( a cutthroat, but hey, a successful one).
The French has always had a reputation for being among the bravest of the brave (ok, so sometimes they were bravest when following behind a teenage girl, but we'll overlook that). Nor have they had any traditional reputation as loosers ( and when they did lose you could count on the fact that the winner was going to pay dearly).
Google on Verdun. In WWI Germany decided they were going to win the war by "bleeding France white." And they did. What they didn't count on was that France could bleed white and remain standing.
Verdun did not fall.
What the French have, as a culture, is a sense of the gallant. The problem here is that the ultimate in gallantry is to go down fighting for a noble cause. The role model is Roland, dying while defending the pass (as it is for the Greeks if it comes to that. The battle at Thermopolyae is one of the most remarkable events in military history).
Alain Prost once noted the irony that he was vilified in France while he was winning in a French car, but became a national hero when he started coming in second in an Italian car.
The point being that the French car was superiour. Almost not winning in a superiour car is the inferiour performance from the point of view of the gallant. Almost, but not quite, winning in an inferiour car is glorious. A Pomeranian taking it to a German Shepard, and going down in defeat, but in the process leaving the Shepard so bloodied that it must retire from the field and seek the ICU.
It isn't even fair to say the French like losing. Jacques Anquitil is a French God. He was a winner, but he won with guts and spirit. Raymond Poulidor is also a French God although he was the perenial bridesmaid to a Belgian, but pushed the Belgian all the way, with guts and spirit even though the cause was laregley hopeless.
To the Frenchman it's the spirit that counts more than the end result.
Elan!
And in WWII there were an awful lot of dead Germans as the result of brave Frenchman refusing to give up the fight just because their government did.
KFG
Hmm....Canada...possibly a good answer.
l
I found this:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0855617.htm
But unfortunately it does not break out the countries in the same manner. The U.S. just gets 'white'. Also, Canada gets a huge 'mixed' group, while the U.S. doesn't get that. I would imagine that it is huge- thanks to Thomas Jefferson, and Strom Thurmond.
I do think though that if you look at those numbers objectively, the lower numbers of black, and hispanic populations in Canada would swing the pendulum in the US's favor.
But checkboxes on a census form is not the entire answer. Because 'white' could mean many things. We do have a huge Russian population here, where they are maintaining a lot of their Russian culture. So, while they are 'white', their culture is different.
But- Canada is another example of a fairly diverse country.
No reason to lie.
I both agree and disagree with this. Americans who haven't traveled much have a hard time imagining what it would be like if every US state spoke a different primary language. And, yes, there are clear cultural differences between the French and Germans, the Brits and Italians, the Greeks and the Swedes.
But even so, that "diversity" is trivial in some respects compared to what I see in the US. When I'm in Europe, some friend will always point out in amazement at cafe how diverse our fellow diners are. "Look! Those guys are German, and at our table we have two Brits and a half French/half Yank, and over there, there's a Greek and and...who knows? Maybe Polish or Czech?" And I shake my head in wonder. In the US, those same guys -- just transport them all on a business trip to a cafe in NYC -- would be called "white guys" and people would wonder if there was something sinister about the cafe -- that maybe it didn't willingly serve a "diverse" clientele.
You want diversity? Think sub-saharan Africans. Think Lao hill tribes. Think Pacific Islanders. Think Chinese. Think Guatemalan Indians. Think Haitians. Think Koreans. Now imagine them, not in ones or twos as cute cultural tokens, completely swamped by the state majority culture and having to fit in, but in clusters of anywhere from tens of thousands to millions, with their own political agendas and no intention of just "fitting in".
Imagine 2/3rds of the population of Paris being African-Europeans. Imagine London being 60% ethnic Pakistani, with the Pakistanis accepting as a matter of course that the white Londoners (those Germans, Greeks, Brits, and the half-French/half-Yank I mentioned) all owed them reparations for British colonialism. Imagine all of Germany being Central American Indians pouring across the borders into every other country in Europe in such numbers that they created voting blocs that no politician dared offend.
In which European country are Europeans a minority and considered to be oppressing the majority? In the fifth largest economy in the world, California, the over one million resident Europeans are all considered just a part of the white minority. Yes, whites are a minority in California, as are all other groups, and the public schools now teach that white oppression is the primary reason the average income of non-whites is lower than that of whites. (The fact that the avg income of Chinese is higher than that of whites is not taught because it might "confuse" the message that the political coalitions have decided needs to be taught.)
There are different reasonable ways to measure diversity. You're right that Americans often can't see the diversity that locals can see in Europe. Having lots of groups speaking different, but similar, languages and having different, but similar cultures that are easily distinguished by the locals but seem about the same to someone from the other side of the world, is one type. Yes, Europe taken as a whole, is more fragmented and diverse than the US in that sense, especially linguistically. And several mountainous regions in Southeast Asia, with only a few hundred thousand people each, are more diverse than all of Europe, by that measure.
Then there is diversity of the sort that is easily recognized by someone from the other side of the world who isn't thinking of just language differences: very large groups from extremely different ethnic backgrounds, having very different cultural attitudes and proclivities and very different political agendas which they are large enough to be able to effectively pursue, living under one roof in the same society. Most Europeans can't even understand such diversity and its implications, accustomed as they are to thinking that Swedes and Italians are extreme examples of "completely different" cultures.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Outside the USA, a Yankee is someone from the USA.
In the USA, a Yankee is someone from the Northern USA.
In the Northern USA, a Yankee is someone from New England (the northeast part of the country, from Maine to Massachussets).
In New England, a Yankee is someone from Vermont.
In Vermont, a Yankee is a local who still has an outhouse, instead of indoor plumbing.
The really scary bit is that "those guys who lost" did not invent the idea.
Not only is Canada the right answer here, but the model of Canada's diversity and multiculturalism (at least since Pierre Elliot Trudeau) is very different from what the USA diversity is.
...etc. is valued, and no "conformance" is required. The different small dots of varying color all come together to form a very nice coloful whole.
In the USA, it is the "melting pot" model. After a while the immigrant is expected to blend in and assimilate/integrate. (Much like the French view it with all the noise about religious symbols and such over there now).
In Canada, it is the "mosaic" model, where difference in culture, religion, customs,
"Being Canadian" does mean the same thing as "being American"
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