In all matters dealing with a foreign culture, remember the Heisenberg principle - by your very act of being in a situation, you are subtly altering it. Americ

In all matters dealing with a foreign culture, remember the Heisenberg principle - by your very act of being in a situation, you are subtly altering it. Americans in technology have a lot more experience with foreigners arriving in America than each kind of foreigner living in their own land has with any American. That's just the way the numbers work. Asians, in particular, are good at acting deferentially, particularly in front of foreigners. The most extreme case are the Japanese - they are the easiest to underestimate race in the world (and the West did underestimate them). As you move west from Japan, you can progressively reduce the deference factor, crank up the self-confidence factor, until you arrive in California, perhaps the most self-confident place in the world. That deference - self-confidence dial works to a very good first approximation :)