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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.
The difference between east and west culture and the ramifications for the world have been in the news for a long time. For instance, the traditional religions in Asia have absolutely no problems with cloning or experimentation on embryos (which is basically verboten in western countries), so the majority of work in that field is in China or other countries which accept the future for what it is. The global marketplace is shrinking, and as we become more and more interconnected cultural differences will no doubt become more and more of an issue.
"...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!
Hasn't the tragedy of Tupac and Biggie taught the world anything? Eastside vs. Westside accomplishes nothing, homies!
Peace out!
Word...
- c -
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
Maybe you should be offended that it implies that "Western" cultures are full of people who are argumentitive, subversive and prone to waste time questioning decisions.
I'd imagine you'd take offense at this, even though it fits your post to a tee.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
We have taken over a software project for the UK gov from another company.
The previous company appeared to be lost in touch with the requirements of the client. Althoguh they had a lot of good coders, things were not implemented to the clients liking. The greatest problem was that only the project managers maintained contact with the client.
Our policy on the other hand has greater client interaction at all levels. And despite the development team being a tenth of the size of the previous company, everyone gets involved, are creative in their solutions, and less time is wasted coding and then correcting irrelevent features.
If there is any greater case for NOT outsourcing software projects to offshore, our case is a good example.
Have a nice day!
and i can say that the single biggest barrier to communication is... the accents. imagine a conference call with ali g. and boss hogg. that's what my day is like...
2 1337 4 u!
I must say that the article does not surprise me, as many of the things they mention I have observed myself (including the French love for object-orientation).
I think you two have just described, with reasonable accuracy, the way that many people of East and West view one another's cultures.
It extends far beyond IT. I recall an article on culture clashes in some other business. The big boss (from Japan) felt disrespected when his American subordinates questioned his orders; the Americans felt disrespected that the boss wasn't listening to their concerns. It can be counterproductive and even dangerous to assume that "everybody who is decent does everything the same way I was taught." And the conflicts tend to come in areas which we are least likely to consider as questionable.
The correlation between culture (as defined in the article) and nationality is very, ver often exagerated. At least that is my experience, after having worked/studied in plenty of multinational environments and with people of multiple nationalities.
/.ers, for example, have a cultural outlook more similar to one another than to the average of his/her national peer. Same applies to many other online communities.
Stereotypes do apply, but anti-stereotypes are plenty, as well. You will find the organized Greek, the warm German, the shy Italian, the Brazilian who does not like soccer and the American who knows world geography.
I have experienced much more consistent cultural environments going from ony company (corporate culture) to another, than crossing national borders. I have seen corporate environments absorb various nationalities, even operating in different countries, and retaining its own (original) corporate culture. And I have seen, as well, plenty of cultural clashes and disagreement over world view within more than one country.
The internet makes the dissociation between nationality/geography and culture even starker.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
Yes.
and if so what is it?
Scientists are still trying to determine that.
But fear not. NASA will be landing a rover ouside of Toulouse this fall.
--- Ban humanity.
When bell atlantic combined with GTE to become verizon, the powerrs-that-be decided to make bell atlantic the "management" and replaced all the west coast GTE exec positions with BA people. The stodgy east coast guys were infuriated by the laid-back california work style, so they installed GPS transponders on all trucks and instituted random monitoring. Now if you stop to take a crap, they'll page you and demand to know what you're doing at a [gas station/restaurant/whatever] for more than a couple minutes. It's insane.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It can be counterproductive and even dangerous to assume that "everybody who is decent does everything the same way I was taught."
This is a problem in software design in general. In my years of debating my view of the non-merits of OOP, I realize that people tend to assume that others think (process information) the same way they themselves do. When others don't "get" how one thinks about something, one tends to assume the other person is ignorant, misguided, or not as smart. Software design is more related to psychology than to math (assuming machine performance is not the primary cost factor). There is no standard method of communicating "head models" to one another, so it often ends up in arguments and paradigm battles where everyone involved is confused and bewildered by their inability to convey their viewpoint.
It is far easier to describe what you want software to do than how to best organize it for grokkability and long-term maintenance.
Table-ized A.I.
I think this comes from decision making.
In my experience there are two ways.
Western (Canada/US), get an idea, get some information, quicikly make a decision. Hopefully if it is wrong, someone points out the mistake before it gets too big.
Eastern (Japan), get a lot of information, make a good well documented decision. Pointing out mistakes means you think that their work in making the decision is wrong, likely you haven't done the same investigation.
When everyone makes off the cuff decisions, there is value to second guessing.
When someone takes a lot of time and energy to make the right decision, it is insulting to be constantly second guessed.
Umm...actually a lot of Americans are Mexican, so there is a good chance that he is.
For all the smack that gets talked about Americans, we're actually surprisingly diverse and worldly. Name me a country in the world that has a population as diverse as ours. Show me another place that has such a wide variety of culture. Honestly, if it can be pointed out that somewhere else in the world there is a place where more cultures co-exist than the United States, I will jump on that bandwagon right away. But, I don't think that place exists.
Most places in the United States have people from all around the world. The area I live in has huge hispanic, Russian, asian, black, Indian, and white populations (probably the only group missing is Eskimo, but we do have a lot of American Indian). You see signs in a zillion different languages- and believe it or not, there are few problems.
I lived in Europe for 4 years, been to Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Each one of those places is fairly singular in their culture. Each culture has some really amazing things to offer- but surprisingly, it seems like they want to give, but not take. I saw little of Asian culture in Latin America. Europe does not have a lot of Middle Eastern influence- other than the Turkish slums.
While travelling around the world, it seems that I see a lot of europeans who are trying to suck in some culture. Yes, it is great that you went to India. Yes, you saw some good things. Yes, it is sad that a lot of Americans prefer to vacation at Disney World. But...when I want to absorb Indian culture, I can go talk to my neighbors. When I feel the hankering for a little bit of Korea, I just go a few more houses over. And during Black History Month, I don't have far to travel. You get to feel smug about dipping your toe into these cultures during an 'adventure' while I get to see the daily lives of people from all around the world.
And somehow Americans are seen as the ones who are not 'worldly'. We are the ones who are seen as 'insulated'.
While the rest of the world holds onto their culture, we have been absorbing all of them. We have exported some crap (McDonalds, Baywatch, Jerry Lewis) but our culture is really an amalgamation of what the rest of the world has brought here.
Any Slashdotter who lives outside of the US, and would like to come for a visit- I would like to offer up my home as a place for you to stay while visiting. I can show you around, and hopefully you can see that there is more to this place than Dairy Queen and Wal*Mart. Really- this is an open offer. (I live in California if you are interested) (And for a 'freak check' I'm 35, and married. Don't live in my parents house, and don't have foil on my windows. I bathe regularly.)
No reason to lie.
It's simply stating the cultural differences that do exist. There are advantages and disadvantages to the approaches innate in each culture. It would seem that the American culture is better suited to innovation and creativity, but that other cultures are better suited to precision and perfection. Both are important in the development of technology.
This didn't say they cannot think for themselves, rather that they defer to authority, and in many situations, that's a good thing. Conversely it seems to suggest that Americans don't have much appreciation for structure, heirarchy and procedure, and that might explain why some software is as flaky as it is even if it is innovative.
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Name me a country in the world that has a population as diverse as ours. Show me another place that has such a wide variety of culture. Honestly, if it can be pointed out that somewhere else in the world there is a place where more cultures co-exist than the United States, I will jump on that bandwagon right away. But, I don't think that place exists.
Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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
Ha! When Canada was formed, the folks thought they be getting the technology of the Americans, the culture of the British, and the cuisine of the French. Instead, they ended up with the culture of the Americans, the cuisine of the British, and the technology of the French! Don't know where I heard/read it, but it sure is true!