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I couldn't agree with you more on the cultural differences and delivery of bad news. I have seen this happen multiple times. The first couple times I thought it

I couldn't agree with you more on the cultural differences and delivery of bad news. I have seen this happen multiple times. The first couple times I thought it had more to do with the way our (US) project managers and developers were communicating the scope and details to their Indian counterparts. After multiple more instances and first hand interactions I came to learn that the biggest issue was the outsourced developers (even from bigger companies) were not giving feedback when issues arose or there were delays. I also found that they would deliver something that was completely off-spec, simply because they didn't understand the original spec.

malandrew 16y ago
China and Japan both have a similar issue with bad news and saying "no". When I worked in China, both my students and school administrators would avoid saying "no". If you are relying on some piece of work being done for product/project success, this approach can also be disastrous because people will say "Yes" to some request that they have absolutely no intention of performing/completing and you may not find out something wasn't done until something fails. That being said, it's not a race issue, but a cultural issue. Someone of Chinese or Indian descent raised in the US are unlikely to present this cultural incompatibility. On the otherhand, I think that if this cultural incompatibility exists, it is the manager's responsibility to neutralize it by demonstrating that delivering bad news (or saying "no" when the answer is in fact "no") is valued. This would be preferable to declining a good candidate for the task at hand.