I can somewhat relate to the engineer in question - in my last position, I had to contend with the suggestion between colleagues that I was being very direct, s

I can somewhat relate to the engineer in question - in my last position, I had to contend with the suggestion between colleagues that I was being very direct, stemming from the fact that I am unashamedly German in an international team. I had colleagues from all over the world and found that I generally meshed well with those which matched my attitude of calling a spade a spade, but conflicted with those which took the opposite approach. Even a (IMO) statement such as "I'm not totally on board with this idea yet - could we look into estimating the cost of this feature before we start coding?" would raise hackles. It is my belief that there might just be some cultural sensitivity training required in OP's scenario.