Finns do get much more chatty after having alcohol. Alcohol keeps the birthrate from being zero. I once came back from a restaurant in Helsinki with a Finn and one other, and we'd all had way too much to drink. The Finn was a very serious guy, even for Finns. So despite all that drink he still was not swaying, his back was perfectly straight, he walked a straight line, got us back to the hotel, etc. Only his head was tilted...
The issue is not just small talk. Finns in general just don't talk a lot. They are very different from their neighbors. While some talk a lot and manage small talk, most are more taciturn, and some are just extremely reluctant to talk.
This is indeed a problem, as I've asked Finns direct questions and been unable to get any answer. This wasn't small talk, it was "when do you think your worker will have his task finished?" This may have been an extreme case, but it is not uncommon to have similar interactions. This isn't just a language gap, even Finns have told me they get frustrated with other Finns who don't like to communicate.
No, this is not about the language being different than English or that there's a different way of doing small talk. The Finns are very much different from their neighbors this way. When I worked a few weeks in Germany I kept quiet while everyone else at lunch was chatting away. When I worked in Finland I was doing most of the talking at lunch.
I don't know why you even mention "Americans", you could substitute "Norwegians" there and it will would be true in comparison.
Unique culture in the South? If you get rid of segregation and slavery there's no difference between a redneck from Alabama and a redneck from Montana. People have moved around so much over the years that everything's diluted, and a good thing too. Everything that's modern American culture has been borrowed anyway. Ain't nobody tearing down your culture, unless your culture happens to be putting up statues of traitors to remind minorities to know their place.
They're not all that way. A few, a small minority, are much more gregarious. They will say hello and goodbye. A few though will be just as chatty as non-Finns, even if they haven't been drinking.
So while it's a stereotype, it's more of a trend than a universal trait. You might not even notice this at all if you're just there as a tourist and aren't having casual conversations, and maybe you don't notice it right away even if working there for a week since they're polite and will talk to the visiting worker. And you won't notice it with Finnish television for sure, because it'd be a dumb show with 5 friends standing around staring at their feet.
Two married Finns are sitting a table for their wedding anniversary, not talking. The wife eventually reaches over and slaps her husband. He sits there for a bit then asks, "why did you slap me?" She says, "That was for 30 years of bad sex." He then sits there for awhile, then eventually reaches over and slaps her back. She says "What was that for?" He says, "That's for knowing the difference!"
Two Finns go out fishing. After about an hour, Pekka says "Nice day, isn't it". Markko grunts. A couple hours after, Pekka says "So relaxing, no?", and Markko again just grunts. A few hours later Pekka says, "I'm glad we did this." At this point Markko barks out "look, are you going to fish or just talk all day?"
I think much of this is because the younger workers don't realize what the work is really like. Games are glamorized, and the industry itself doesn't show much of the inner workings unless it's scrubbed clean. Ie, a lot of the "inside the making of..." will show people in cubicles who don't speak, and then show the celebrities doing voice overs, the toys on people's desks, and interviews from execs and leads.
Well, for Rockstar Games, most of those workers aren't really software developers. Much of the work in crunch time is art, testing, creating objects, retesting, fixing bugs, retesting, database management, etc.
It usually is poor planning though. If the team regularly has to work extra hours then either the scheduling is faulty or the management is relying on all this "voluntary" overtime which is shortsighted. Sure you may want to do a good job, but that should be incentive for you to push back on unrealistic schedules rather than incentive for you to work twice as hard. You also need your direct management to push back against unrealistic project managers.
However, sometimes project managers are just stupid and will never learn. I've seen them with many years of never once having a project done in time and yet they continue to make unrealistic deadlines; a fault with upper management for keeping these people around perhaps.
For instance, I've been at a place where things were often sales driven - one lone guy goes and gets a contract signed and then engineering is told that we need to have the project done by the deadline or else there are contractual penalties. The sales guy doesn't get punished for this (and usually is excessively rewarded via commissions), so it keeps happening. And yes, we had sometimes paid very large penalties for being late. So after that company was bought out by a very much larger corporation, I overheard two of the project managers who were well known for having unrealistic deadlines complain that the new company was so slooow at planning things. After they left the lunch table the rest of us had a laugh at their expense since those guys rarely had a project come in on time with quality.
Now, speaking as a manager - don't start thinking of yourself as just a creator. Remember, you have to do a whole lot of stuff that's boring and tedious beyond the few hours a month being creative. You need to write documents, you need plans, you need to show up to meetings, you need testing, etc. Don't kill yourself and ruin your personal life over crap like that. If you work too long hours then your quality will suffer and you'll learn to hate your work.
Farmers are self employed though. Self employed people often are regularly working very long hours, to complain to the boss they look in the mirror.
For real overtime, you DO get paid for this, you get paid for the overtime hours more than normal hours. Many employees want this. However if it's continual then something's wrong. Something's wrong with the company too since they lose so much money this way versus hiring extra help at the standard rate.
However there are people who are salaried who say they do overtime, I suspect they're just confused about the terms. For salaried workers there's no real laws in many states about how long you can or can't work. Typically most companies won't explicitly ask salaried workers to work over 40 hours a week, but many employees will do so anyway can claim "it's expected of us" even if there was no order to do this or the policy says otherwise. A temporary crunch time is perhaps normal; fix the dead-in-the-water bug before the customer pulls the plug for example. But again when it's ongoing then it means something is wrong with the company. There are people in Silicon Valley who say crunch time is "normal" but I think they're mistaken and should be checking the laws in this regard, or raise concerns with upper management.
Verizon, and most other telcos, don't want to be in the business of being vital infrastructure and universal service. What they want to do is just sell consumers overpriced products with bad service so that they can collect more profits. The FCC used to say that if they want to use our limited airwaves then they need to maintain a certain level of responsibility.
Ecuador doesn't have to prove that he would face political persecution if expelled (to whatever country), it's up to Assange to prove that he would. A country is not legally bound merely by a claim of an asylum seeker. Ecuador could just say that they granted him asylum while considering the claim and then found later that there was no basis to the claim.
So while Assange claims he is essentially a prisoner because of a big cache of information he passed along, the person who provided that cache is now out of military prison and has not "disappeared" or been charged with civilian crimes.
Which government? The US government could do this with anyone and yet either has not done this or has only done this secretly. If the government has done this secretly then they would logically want to maintain this secrecy. So why is Assange the only person that they would disappear publicly? The most damage the US government could to do Assange and Wikileaks is to do nothing and prove him to be merely paranoid.
On the otherhand, possibly due to grammar, it seems like say "government" as if it were a single world wide government. Hopefully you're not that crazy.
As for the Saudis, note that they are going to face a big economic hit for this fiasco in Turkey, even though everyone in the world already knows that the Saudis are rubbish at civil rights already. If the US did the same thing it would be a disaster to the US. No sane government would attempt this sort of disappearance merely to send a message (and yes, the Saudis are insane, or inept, or both).
It's absurd to think that this would happen. Most conspiracy theories live on the fact that such things happen all the time in secret and that we don't know about it because the government covers this up. If this happened publicly it would simultaneously both confirm and refute the conspiracy theories, causing the universe to wink out of existence.
That's what he claims. Whether this is true or not has not been shown. By staying within the embassy we can only theorize. Maintaining a victim status however ensures he stays in the news.
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Finns do get much more chatty after having alcohol. Alcohol keeps the birthrate from being zero. I once came back from a restaurant in Helsinki with a Finn and one other, and we'd all had way too much to drink. The Finn was a very serious guy, even for Finns. So despite all that drink he still was not swaying, his back was perfectly straight, he walked a straight line, got us back to the hotel, etc. Only his head was tilted...
There is a spectrum in Finland, from those who will chat with strangers to those who don't like to talk much with their closest friends.
Finns would think that Scotsman talks a wee too much. All that chatting lets in too much cold air.
The issue is not just small talk. Finns in general just don't talk a lot. They are very different from their neighbors. While some talk a lot and manage small talk, most are more taciturn, and some are just extremely reluctant to talk.
This is indeed a problem, as I've asked Finns direct questions and been unable to get any answer. This wasn't small talk, it was "when do you think your worker will have his task finished?" This may have been an extreme case, but it is not uncommon to have similar interactions. This isn't just a language gap, even Finns have told me they get frustrated with other Finns who don't like to communicate.
No, this is not about the language being different than English or that there's a different way of doing small talk. The Finns are very much different from their neighbors this way. When I worked a few weeks in Germany I kept quiet while everyone else at lunch was chatting away. When I worked in Finland I was doing most of the talking at lunch.
I don't know why you even mention "Americans", you could substitute "Norwegians" there and it will would be true in comparison.
Unique culture in the South? If you get rid of segregation and slavery there's no difference between a redneck from Alabama and a redneck from Montana. People have moved around so much over the years that everything's diluted, and a good thing too. Everything that's modern American culture has been borrowed anyway. Ain't nobody tearing down your culture, unless your culture happens to be putting up statues of traitors to remind minorities to know their place.
They're not all that way. A few, a small minority, are much more gregarious. They will say hello and goodbye. A few though will be just as chatty as non-Finns, even if they haven't been drinking.
So while it's a stereotype, it's more of a trend than a universal trait. You might not even notice this at all if you're just there as a tourist and aren't having casual conversations, and maybe you don't notice it right away even if working there for a week since they're polite and will talk to the visiting worker. And you won't notice it with Finnish television for sure, because it'd be a dumb show with 5 friends standing around staring at their feet.
Two married Finns are sitting a table for their wedding anniversary, not talking.
The wife eventually reaches over and slaps her husband.
He sits there for a bit then asks, "why did you slap me?"
She says, "That was for 30 years of bad sex."
He then sits there for awhile, then eventually reaches over and slaps her back.
She says "What was that for?"
He says, "That's for knowing the difference!"
Tango, and Donald Duck. I dunno why, but they're nuts about Donald Duck the way the French are nuts about Jerry Lewis.
Finnish without Small Talk is like Ruby.
And ya, if there were no alcohol Finland would have no birthrate at all.
How can you tell if a Finn is an extrovert? They stare at your shoes instead of theirs.
Two Finns go out fishing. After about an hour, Pekka says "Nice day, isn't it". Markko grunts. A couple hours after, Pekka says "So relaxing, no?", and Markko again just grunts. A few hours later Pekka says, "I'm glad we did this." At this point Markko barks out "look, are you going to fish or just talk all day?"
I think much of this is because the younger workers don't realize what the work is really like. Games are glamorized, and the industry itself doesn't show much of the inner workings unless it's scrubbed clean. Ie, a lot of the "inside the making of..." will show people in cubicles who don't speak, and then show the celebrities doing voice overs, the toys on people's desks, and interviews from execs and leads.
Well, for Rockstar Games, most of those workers aren't really software developers. Much of the work in crunch time is art, testing, creating objects, retesting, fixing bugs, retesting, database management, etc.
It usually is poor planning though. If the team regularly has to work extra hours then either the scheduling is faulty or the management is relying on all this "voluntary" overtime which is shortsighted. Sure you may want to do a good job, but that should be incentive for you to push back on unrealistic schedules rather than incentive for you to work twice as hard. You also need your direct management to push back against unrealistic project managers.
However, sometimes project managers are just stupid and will never learn. I've seen them with many years of never once having a project done in time and yet they continue to make unrealistic deadlines; a fault with upper management for keeping these people around perhaps.
For instance, I've been at a place where things were often sales driven - one lone guy goes and gets a contract signed and then engineering is told that we need to have the project done by the deadline or else there are contractual penalties. The sales guy doesn't get punished for this (and usually is excessively rewarded via commissions), so it keeps happening. And yes, we had sometimes paid very large penalties for being late. So after that company was bought out by a very much larger corporation, I overheard two of the project managers who were well known for having unrealistic deadlines complain that the new company was so slooow at planning things. After they left the lunch table the rest of us had a laugh at their expense since those guys rarely had a project come in on time with quality.
Now, speaking as a manager - don't start thinking of yourself as just a creator. Remember, you have to do a whole lot of stuff that's boring and tedious beyond the few hours a month being creative. You need to write documents, you need plans, you need to show up to meetings, you need testing, etc. Don't kill yourself and ruin your personal life over crap like that. If you work too long hours then your quality will suffer and you'll learn to hate your work.
Farmers are self employed though. Self employed people often are regularly working very long hours, to complain to the boss they look in the mirror.
For real overtime, you DO get paid for this, you get paid for the overtime hours more than normal hours. Many employees want this. However if it's continual then something's wrong. Something's wrong with the company too since they lose so much money this way versus hiring extra help at the standard rate.
However there are people who are salaried who say they do overtime, I suspect they're just confused about the terms. For salaried workers there's no real laws in many states about how long you can or can't work. Typically most companies won't explicitly ask salaried workers to work over 40 hours a week, but many employees will do so anyway can claim "it's expected of us" even if there was no order to do this or the policy says otherwise. A temporary crunch time is perhaps normal; fix the dead-in-the-water bug before the customer pulls the plug for example. But again when it's ongoing then it means something is wrong with the company. There are people in Silicon Valley who say crunch time is "normal" but I think they're mistaken and should be checking the laws in this regard, or raise concerns with upper management.
Hmm, cheaper than mobile phones.
Verizon, and most other telcos, don't want to be in the business of being vital infrastructure and universal service. What they want to do is just sell consumers overpriced products with bad service so that they can collect more profits. The FCC used to say that if they want to use our limited airwaves then they need to maintain a certain level of responsibility.
They're not called Luddites, they're normal people who just aren't as rich and hip as you are.
Ecuador doesn't have to prove that he would face political persecution if expelled (to whatever country), it's up to Assange to prove that he would. A country is not legally bound merely by a claim of an asylum seeker. Ecuador could just say that they granted him asylum while considering the claim and then found later that there was no basis to the claim.
So while Assange claims he is essentially a prisoner because of a big cache of information he passed along, the person who provided that cache is now out of military prison and has not "disappeared" or been charged with civilian crimes.
Which government? The US government could do this with anyone and yet either has not done this or has only done this secretly. If the government has done this secretly then they would logically want to maintain this secrecy. So why is Assange the only person that they would disappear publicly? The most damage the US government could to do Assange and Wikileaks is to do nothing and prove him to be merely paranoid.
On the otherhand, possibly due to grammar, it seems like say "government" as if it were a single world wide government. Hopefully you're not that crazy.
As for the Saudis, note that they are going to face a big economic hit for this fiasco in Turkey, even though everyone in the world already knows that the Saudis are rubbish at civil rights already. If the US did the same thing it would be a disaster to the US. No sane government would attempt this sort of disappearance merely to send a message (and yes, the Saudis are insane, or inept, or both).
It's absurd to think that this would happen. Most conspiracy theories live on the fact that such things happen all the time in secret and that we don't know about it because the government covers this up. If this happened publicly it would simultaneously both confirm and refute the conspiracy theories, causing the universe to wink out of existence.
By staying inside the consulate that conspiracy theory can remain alive and active. It may turn out here's merely a prisoner of his own paranoia.
That's what he claims. Whether this is true or not has not been shown. By staying within the embassy we can only theorize. Maintaining a victim status however ensures he stays in the news.