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100%! I've worked with a ton of great Indian folks, but the "no" cultural translation is hard. Just yesterday I was working through an issue, came up with a cl
by ethbr0 3y ago
100%! I've worked with a ton of great Indian folks, but the "no" cultural translation is hard.
Just yesterday I was working through an issue, came up with a clear plan that critically involved notifying the customer before making any changes, after they'd been burned by previous uncommunicated changes.
Was in the middle of a busy day, so I didn't think and quickly asked if there were any problems or everyone was onboard with the plan: "Yes."
5 minutes later, as I'm typing an email to the customer, I get pinged: "The changes have been implemented. Kindly confirm with the customer they took effect as desired."
FML. My fault... but really hard to keep yes/no mapping in my head constantly, at all times.
- peteradio 3y agoI don't understand what your alternative was? How was this your fault?
- jghn 3y agoIf you're aware of the situation you can change the questions you ask and how you probe in to account for the difference in "no" in order to get to the truth. I believe they're saying that due to them being busy they didn't think about it at the time even though they should've known better.
- ethbr0 3y agoHaving had similar things happen before, the optimal move on my part would have been to language-engineer a better confirmation question and/or ask for read-back of the plan. E.g. open-ended, no direct requirement to reply in a negative manner, etc.
- snapcaster 3y agoI don't really get this anecdote, this seems less like someone having a different definition of "no" and more like just ignoring you (which happens all the time, it's hard to listen to everything in a workplace slack)
- causi 3y agoI'm surprised Slack doesn't have a functionality where you can tag something like a sentence or a phrase as "essential" and make everybody else tap a button acknowledging that they've read and understood it. Maybe also with a timer that stops you from tapping it before you can read it.
- eschneider 3y agoAh, but as soon as everything is tagged as "essential", nothing is. :/
- InitialLastName 3y agoThe true engineering fields have a praxis of using actual signatures on designs, documentation, and decisions for exactly this reason: people are more likely to take meaningful responsibility for understanding the subject matter when their signature is permanently engraved on the decision (and there is in fact more meaningful responsibility when you can trace signatures).