7 ms·

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience,

Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career. Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more): 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as disrespect or incompetence. So, instead of asking for clarification, many people just "do something" and hope it is acceptable. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society. 2. Our education system mainly rewards results, not how good or well-thought-out the results are. Sure, better answers get more marks, but the gap between "okay" and "excellent" is usually not emphasized much. This comes from scale problems (huge number of students), very low median income (~$2400/year), and poorly trained teachers, especially outside big cities. Many teachers themselves memorize answers and expect matching output from students. This is slowly improving, but the damage is already there. 3. Pay in India is still severely (serioualy low, with 12-14+ hour work days, even more than 996 culture of China) low for most people, and the job market is extremely competitive. For many students and juniors, having a long list of "projects", PRs, or known names on their resume most often the only way to stand out. Quantity often wins over quality. With LLMs, this problem just got amplified. Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so.

cebert 9mo ago
> Pay in India is still severely (seriously low, with 12-14+ hour workdays, even more than the 996 culture of China) low for most people. My employer outsources some work to Indian contractors. I know how much we are paying the contracting firm, which is low. Knowing the firm takes a cut before the contractors are paid, I feel terrible for how little they are compensated. I frequently wonder if we’d get better output if we paid more.
- freakynit 9mo ago
  Avoid middlemen in India.. sorry for the word, but they are the biggest leechers. We hate them too here. India is filled with small one-room service-based companies(the middlemens') that hire interns, for ZERO pay, make them work 12-14 hour days under extremely "humiliating" conditions and then when it comes to giving them internship completion certificate, they demand huge sums of money just to release them... think about it. As for how you are gonna do without the middlemen, I dont have the anwer yet... ideas are welcome.
  - bluGill 9mo ago
    The good engineers in india know their value and get it. My company has offices in india because you have to manage them yourself not use middlemen. You can train the locals to be great managers (at least some). wages for good people in india are worse similar people in the us, but often high than in europe. But there are other problems with europe and so it can be the better deal.
    - com 9mo ago
      Could you expand on the other problems with Europe other than hiring and firing laws?
      - bluGill 9mo ago
        Senior/staff type engineers are not a union position so great people refuse promotions and responsibility because they don't want to leave the union. Thus they won't mentor juniors, and other things that you need great engineers for. (At least that is how the union people I work with in Europe are, there are other unions with different rules) There is probably more.
        ragall 9mo ago
        What union ? In which country ?
        9mo ago
tribaal 9mo ago
This is extremely valuable insight for me, a non-Indian manager. Thanks a lot!
- freakynit 9mo ago
  Glad it was of help :)
moralestapia 9mo ago
Since we are talking about LLMs, what I've noticed about the Indian/Pakistani "LLM" is they follow this way of structuring thoughts: 1. They 2. Always 3. List 4. Things ... and end up with a conclusion/punchline/takeaway. I always wanted to ask, is that due to training? I could imagine all schools around there have a specific style, like all their assignments need to follow this general form, and then they just get used to it and it permeates to their everyday life.
- regenschutz 9mo ago
  That's how all LLMs structure content, not just Indian/Pakistani LLMs.
- robofanatic 9mo ago
  I bet you haven't seriously communicated with others in a language that is not native to you. You'll probably end up doing similar things if you have to.
  - moralestapia 9mo ago
    I am doing that right now.
- ragall 9mo ago
  It's due to training (I suspect both OpenAI/Microsoft and Google have been training on their entire corpus of internal comms and technical docs). After almost 10 years in a FAANG I also tend to write like that.
- otikik 9mo ago
  Well, imagine that you noticed 3 things instead of only one. 1. The first thing 2. The second thing 3. The last thing Makes perfect sense in that case.
bluecheese452 9mo ago
Alternatively you could hire people from cultures where this crap doesn’t fly.
- anonymars 9mo ago
  But that might cost more money! Trust me they'll be able to continue the work while you sleep!
koliber 9mo ago
I've seen an interesting behavior in India. If I ask someone on the street for directions, they will always give me an answer, even if they don't know. If they don't know, they'll make something up. This was strange. I asked a lot of Indian people about it and they said that it has to do with "saving face". Saying "I don't know" is a disgraceful thing. So if someone does not know the answer, they make something up instead. Have you seen this? This behavior appears in software projects as well. It's difficult to work like this.
- ilogik 9mo ago
  sounds like an LLM :)
  - buckle8017 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ValentineC 9mo ago
      I moderate an airline subreddit, and it's interesting that many of the lazy or entitled-sounding questions (e.g. "can I get compensation for this?") come from people flying to/from Indian cities.
      - fakedang 9mo ago
        Honestly that's just the massive population talking. There really isn't a "Hindi web" for India unlike for the Chinese, so we all come to roost in the WWW. Hence you'll get bad questions like these but you'll also get YouTube videos on obscure engineering and science topics, which I think is a fair deal. The Chinese web is on similar lines, although there is a lot more country bashing, especially against Indians and Americans. But nevertheless just the same. At least none of these come nowhere near to the brainrot that is the Arabic web.
        buckle8017 9mo ago
oaiey 9mo ago
Particular topic (1) is also trained in cross cultural trainings. Another topic is: do not expect a remote dev to pickup ambient knowledge, particular if they are juniors with no life experience. And since outsourcing to India is trying to get the resources for the lowest possible price, the result is: you get them as junior / fake senior / bad senior as you think. Pay better in India, get better people.
- htrp 9mo ago
  How do you stop the better people from moving out of India (and/or to another firm) once they have your work exp on their resume?
  - oaiey 9mo ago
    With higher salaries (is happening) and better quality of life (I do not know, do not life there). Within company obviously quality of the culture matters there. However considering how things are worldwide right now, I think that trend stops soonish.
  - triceratops 9mo ago
    Q: How do you stop anyone from moving to a better company or better-paying role? A: You don't. Unless there isn't a better company or better-paying role. If a person is motivated to move out of the country altogether it's got nothing to do with you and there's nothing you can do.
jcims 9mo ago
As a gent with some years under his belt, I have to humbly admit that it was quite late in my career before I realized how much culture influences how people operate. Two separate incidents with two different cultural contexts brought it to the fore about ten years ago. I sought some advice from a senior exec that I was close with and he just laid it out in very unflinching way. It was just one conversation but it has helped me tremendously in the years since.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  Any chance you could expand that story?
  - jcims 9mo ago
    I thought about it when I posted but it felt like an invitation to dunk on the cultures involved. In one case it was a communication pattern that I found to be very unprofessional by an entire team, the other was nearly instant and *intense* conflict between a former direct of mine and their new manager that I got sucked into the middle of.
  - machomaster 9mo ago
    If you are interested in this cultural topic and how to practically modify your communication, check The Culture Map book.
palmotea 9mo ago
> 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as disrespect or incompetence. So, instead of asking for clarification, many people just "do something" and hope it is acceptable. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society. Way back, when I first started working with Indian offshore teams, the contracting company at the time had a kind of intercultural training that addressed that issue. > Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so. That's exactly the advice they gave. They advised was to try to make your relationships and interactions as peer-like as possible. The more "authority" is present in the relationship, the more communication breaks down in the way you describe.
- unsupp0rted 9mo ago
  To what degree did this change the results?
sersi 9mo ago
> 1. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society. Having worked in Japan, while there is a strong respect for authority, there's also much less hesitation about asking for clarification. I worked with an Indian offshore team and in a Japanese company and, while there's a lot to dislike in Japanese office culture, this kind of pattern of behaviour doesn't happen. 2 & 3 do make sense though. I've had mixed result with your advice at the end. I'd say that it worked for about 30% of the offshore engineers I've worked with and indeed I had more success with juniors than with more senior developers.
- cdman 9mo ago
  I also worked with japanese, including on site in Tokyo and quickly learned that asking "did you understand it?" is useless. I always had to keep in mind to ask "what did you understand?".
- vpribish 9mo ago
  I worked with a lot of Israelis and Eastern Europeans - They's say no and argue even when they agreed :) it was fine.
conductr 9mo ago
> Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so. Very true. I’ve hired (super cheap) engineering talent and this is the key to getting a project to run the way a westerner expects; where everyone is constantly open to challenging each other, where everyone can bring ideas to the table, and where there’s no such thing as a stupid question. I’ve done this during a big phase of time others locally shunning this huge talent pool as the results were crappy/unpredictable. Even to the point they’ll hire local for 100x the cost. It’s just a management problem though and a pretty simple one at that. The other thing is if you train them in your style, keep using them on the next project if you can. It compounds if you have the ability to work with them over a longer time. You have to be very insistent that you’re not proposing the best solution at expect them as engineers to point out any opportunities for improvement. If something later has to be rebuilt or isn’t working well, sometimes it’s good (if it makes sense, case by case) to do a post mortem and understand why the version 2 wasn’t built during the version 1. I think that helps them really understand it in a concrete way if they’re struggling with it. In any case, I’d much rather take a budget for 1 local dev and spend it on a whole team of Indians and take on the management burden if it means retaining more equity or profits or building something I otherwise wouldn’t do myself due to scale.
lostlogin 9mo ago
> 996 culture. I hadn’t heard of this, thanks. Working 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
- freakynit 9mo ago
  Work cultures are brutal in SEA and South Asia countries. And there is no job security, no social security, no labour laws(on paper they are, but, are not applied) and no liveable pay(this is changing though).
figassis 9mo ago
This is one reason, the other is just fraud. Being from a developing country, I am well aware of the stigma of saying I don't know, which I had to strip out of me as I became an engineer to the point of me being immediately suspicious when someone tells me they know about some moldy complex topic, even if it's in their profession. The fraud part is that I developing countries, almost all activities that require some skill have lots of people claiming to be experts. 99% of them are lying. You take your car to a shop and they tell you they will solve your problem. With skepticism, (because they asked no clarifying questions) you try to give them some context and they tell you not to worry. 1 day later they tell you parts X, Y and Z need to be replaced, it will just cost $$$. You ask if there is no way the current parts can just be repaired, and they tell you no, they must be replaced. You ask what was the actual issue, and they tell you the parts are completely damaged, or worn out, need to replace. Sure, you pay, and they give you the car, works for a few days, maybe week, then breaks down. You plug in a portable OBD scanner and it tells you the exact component they just put in is failing (likely not even compatible with the car). You give them back the car, tell them since you paid $$$, you will only take the car back once it works perfectly, and you won't pay a cent more. They then spend the next few days looking for an actual expert, that comes in and repairs the original parts, for $, and they take the "new" ones back to the store and give you your money back. They don't know anything about cars, they experiment on yours, with your money, by swapping parts. This was easier when cars were less strict with parts. This is fraud, not face saving, and it's in every developing country.
- unsupp0rted 9mo ago
  You’re not allowed to admit it’s fraud. It’s just a cultural difference. You explained it wrong. You didn’t pay enough. You were supposed to try to become their best friend first. Anything not to say “well some cultures just have no problem committing fraud at any opportunity”
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- mindentropy 9mo ago
  Perfectly put. Scamming is a cottage industry. No ethics whatsoever. What I do is I go to the top guy, tell him I need an expert and nothing else. No experimentation whatsoever on my vehicle etc. I pay slightly extra for the troubles. Before I go for repairs I try to learn as much as possible to know what they will screw up next. If you go in as a layman, then it is fraud and incompetence central all the way.
blindstitch 9mo ago
Thanks for all this, what you wrote and the discussion that followed has been genuinely helpful, and I think it might help bridge some cultural divides that I've experienced when working with Indian people. Another question I'd like to ask of you is, do you see any aspects of the western style of cooperation that are the inverse? i.e. which create divides in which the westerner's ways of working can be the source of conflict?
- freakynit 9mo ago
  1. Same here. I too learnt a lot more from the following discussions. 2. None. We absolutely adore the ways westerners work. Your ethics, discipline, hardwork, attention to detail, inventive and creative nature, the support structures, and fair pay (and many more).
ASalazarMX 9mo ago
Could this cultural difference explain why they're set up LLMs to do work for them, though? No authority asked them to, but I guess it would look nice in their resume if successful.
- freakynit 9mo ago
  Two broad reasons (as far as I can think of): 1. A lot more can be done in a given amount of time. Looks good on resume. Recall that India is still extremely poor (dont get influenced by the GDP numbers.. ) and getting a job as fast as you can after college can make a real difference to your living standards here. 2. Our education system is shit. And so are our teachers(mostly). Meaning, when folks are out of college, they generally are not as competitive as maybe their counterparts from western regions are(not in terms of hardwork, but, knowledge and hands-on tasks). LLM's makes it possible to do complete much more complex work than otherwise was possible at current experience. Indians are extremely hard-working. The problem is people are extremely poor (~2400 median income... that's per YEAR). Even after adjusting for PPP. this translates to less than 10K USD/YEAR. Now think about living on 10K/year and supporting 5 family members (partner with 4 kids, or parents with 2 siblings).
gdilla 9mo ago
An Indian person basically is used to not making any decisions for themselves until maybe they're married off (and even then, probably not until age 40). /s
Aloha 9mo ago
Thank you for this cultural explanation - I've experienced the same thing with Japanese co-workers - there is often a "no" but to American ears its so subtle that it often goes in one ear and out the other.
- freakynit 9mo ago
  Both the cultures suffer from "a senior is always right" mentality. Therefore, with my juniors, I used to intentionally (sometimes, and mostly during early days of their joinings) make stupid little mistakes (harmless) and used to let those folks figure that out and then appreciate them on catching it. Worked like wonder. Never ever anyone hesitated to discuss anything with me anytime.. even personal issues many times :) You just have to make it easy for others to do their jobs. Removing barriers, of any kind, helps. This is even more true with juniors.
ponector 9mo ago
In my experience working with developers from India, there are two ways: 1. You have no authority and they ignore you. 2. You have authority and they become yes-men. Real dialogue: - Is it done? - Yes! But not yet.
- freakynit 9mo ago
  The sweet spot is being authoritative without being overbearing. When leadership feels supportive rather than controlling, people engage honestly... and that balance comes from experience.
to11mtm 9mo ago
> Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so. Semi related to this, one of the biggest 'breakthroughs' in building the right trust/rapport with an offshore team was sending an email to their leadership making it clear and on the record that "Comments against pull requests should not be used against the employee in reviews, if there is a recurring issue I will discuss it via other channels." That one email changed PR back-and-forth entirely, cause yeah I guess sometimes they'd get dinged for too many PR comments on some metric. At first their management wasn't thrilled, thankfully there was a good enough improvement in quality and defect rate that in a couple months they were won over.
- freakynit 9mo ago
  I missed adding this to the advice section. But glad you pointed it out and shared your positive experience with it. Thanks..
- jgwil2 9mo ago
  Do you mean that they were dinged if a PR they opened received too many comments? Can you elaborate on how the communication style changed after this? Like they were more willing to seek clarification/discussion?
  - to11mtm 9mo ago
    > Can you elaborate on how the communication style changed after this? Like they were more willing to seek clarification/discussion? More willing to seek clarification and less likely to try to defend choices with 'This is what the scope of work said'. And also more willing to jump in on colleagues and my own PRs to provide feedback. Which was also an important part of how to frame the communication "I'm not telling them they are doing their jobs wrong, I am telling them how to do it better to make all the stakeholders happier." > Do you mean that they were dinged if a PR they opened received too many comments? It was never explicitly said at first, however the communication was inspired by past work experiences where yes, too many comments on a PR or similar review could get held against you for far longer than was productive or even healthy, and yes it was something the whole team had to deal with (i.e. very much a shared experience amongst colleagues.) In fact I'd argue that the time I've been at shops where people weren't afraid to give feedback has been about 50-50, while also noting that the shops that had a culture shift where giving feedback became OK and safe for all parties, quickly became more productive. Cause, the other thing to consider, is that people don't necessarily want to risk causing animosity by jumping into a colleague's PR and pointing out a problem, they don't want to be the guy that makes their colleague "look bad". Which is of course unhealthy, but again by re-framing the context of PR feedback for Taylorist robot management, you get better response from their management as far as buy in.
code_for_monkey 9mo ago
my managers are indian, and honestly Im struggling. Do you have any advice? I feel like im not allowed to ask questions, a lot of our processes dont make sense to me.
- freakynit 9mo ago
  Not the advice Im proud to give (or anyone should give), but the one that will work: Create dependency on yourself, company-wide, and make sure the boss knows about it. Avoid direct confrontation with your manager.
ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
> 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as disrespect or incompetence. So, instead of asking for clarification, many people just "do something" and hope it is acceptable. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society. Damn me, Scotland is going to be quite the culture shock for you.
banannaise 9mo ago
> Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so. I've found that this is also true of American engineers, particularly those fresh out of college. So many people have internalized that open curiosity will yield no result at best and direct punishment at worst.
thtmnisamnstr 9mo ago
> 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as disrespect or incompetence. So, instead of asking for clarification, many people just "do something" and hope it is acceptable. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society. I was a manager at Deloitte in their tech consulting practice. I led fairly large teams of devs based in India. This is very true, and it takes a lot of time and trust-building to overcome. Making Indian devs, especially early-career ones, comfortable enough to oppose something or offer feedback is non-trivial, and often Indian engineering managers make it more difficult. Overcoming cultural hierarchy is hard.

cebert 9mo ago

> Pay in India is still severely (seriously low, with 12-14+ hour workdays, even more than the 996 culture of China) low for most people. My employer outsources some work to Indian contractors. I know how much we are paying the contracting firm, which is low. Knowing the firm takes a cut before the contractors are paid, I feel terrible for how little they are compensated. I frequently wonder if we’d get better output if we paid more.

freakynit 9mo ago
Avoid middlemen in India.. sorry for the word, but they are the biggest leechers. We hate them too here. India is filled with small one-room service-based companies(the middlemens') that hire interns, for ZERO pay, make them work 12-14 hour days under extremely "humiliating" conditions and then when it comes to giving them internship completion certificate, they demand huge sums of money just to release them... think about it. As for how you are gonna do without the middlemen, I dont have the anwer yet... ideas are welcome.
- bluGill 9mo ago
  The good engineers in india know their value and get it. My company has offices in india because you have to manage them yourself not use middlemen. You can train the locals to be great managers (at least some). wages for good people in india are worse similar people in the us, but often high than in europe. But there are other problems with europe and so it can be the better deal.
  - com 9mo ago
    Could you expand on the other problems with Europe other than hiring and firing laws?
    - bluGill 9mo ago
      Senior/staff type engineers are not a union position so great people refuse promotions and responsibility because they don't want to leave the union. Thus they won't mentor juniors, and other things that you need great engineers for. (At least that is how the union people I work with in Europe are, there are other unions with different rules) There is probably more.
      - ragall 9mo ago
        What union ? In which country ?
      - 9mo ago

tribaal 9mo ago

This is extremely valuable insight for me, a non-Indian manager. Thanks a lot!

freakynit 9mo ago
Glad it was of help :)

moralestapia 9mo ago

Since we are talking about LLMs, what I've noticed about the Indian/Pakistani "LLM" is they follow this way of structuring thoughts: 1. They 2. Always 3. List 4. Things ... and end up with a conclusion/punchline/takeaway. I always wanted to ask, is that due to training? I could imagine all schools around there have a specific style, like all their assignments need to follow this general form, and then they just get used to it and it permeates to their everyday life.

regenschutz 9mo ago
That's how all LLMs structure content, not just Indian/Pakistani LLMs.
robofanatic 9mo ago
I bet you haven't seriously communicated with others in a language that is not native to you. You'll probably end up doing similar things if you have to.
- moralestapia 9mo ago
  I am doing that right now.
ragall 9mo ago
It's due to training (I suspect both OpenAI/Microsoft and Google have been training on their entire corpus of internal comms and technical docs). After almost 10 years in a FAANG I also tend to write like that.
otikik 9mo ago
Well, imagine that you noticed 3 things instead of only one. 1. The first thing 2. The second thing 3. The last thing Makes perfect sense in that case.

bluecheese452 9mo ago

Alternatively you could hire people from cultures where this crap doesn’t fly.

anonymars 9mo ago
But that might cost more money! Trust me they'll be able to continue the work while you sleep!

koliber 9mo ago

I've seen an interesting behavior in India. If I ask someone on the street for directions, they will always give me an answer, even if they don't know. If they don't know, they'll make something up. This was strange. I asked a lot of Indian people about it and they said that it has to do with "saving face". Saying "I don't know" is a disgraceful thing. So if someone does not know the answer, they make something up instead. Have you seen this? This behavior appears in software projects as well. It's difficult to work like this.

ilogik 9mo ago
sounds like an LLM :)
- buckle8017 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ValentineC 9mo ago
    I moderate an airline subreddit, and it's interesting that many of the lazy or entitled-sounding questions (e.g. "can I get compensation for this?") come from people flying to/from Indian cities.
    - fakedang 9mo ago
      Honestly that's just the massive population talking. There really isn't a "Hindi web" for India unlike for the Chinese, so we all come to roost in the WWW. Hence you'll get bad questions like these but you'll also get YouTube videos on obscure engineering and science topics, which I think is a fair deal. The Chinese web is on similar lines, although there is a lot more country bashing, especially against Indians and Americans. But nevertheless just the same. At least none of these come nowhere near to the brainrot that is the Arabic web.
      - buckle8017 9mo ago

oaiey 9mo ago

Particular topic (1) is also trained in cross cultural trainings. Another topic is: do not expect a remote dev to pickup ambient knowledge, particular if they are juniors with no life experience. And since outsourcing to India is trying to get the resources for the lowest possible price, the result is: you get them as junior / fake senior / bad senior as you think. Pay better in India, get better people.

htrp 9mo ago
How do you stop the better people from moving out of India (and/or to another firm) once they have your work exp on their resume?
- oaiey 9mo ago
  With higher salaries (is happening) and better quality of life (I do not know, do not life there). Within company obviously quality of the culture matters there. However considering how things are worldwide right now, I think that trend stops soonish.
- triceratops 9mo ago
  Q: How do you stop anyone from moving to a better company or better-paying role? A: You don't. Unless there isn't a better company or better-paying role. If a person is motivated to move out of the country altogether it's got nothing to do with you and there's nothing you can do.

jcims 9mo ago

As a gent with some years under his belt, I have to humbly admit that it was quite late in my career before I realized how much culture influences how people operate. Two separate incidents with two different cultural contexts brought it to the fore about ten years ago. I sought some advice from a senior exec that I was close with and he just laid it out in very unflinching way. It was just one conversation but it has helped me tremendously in the years since.

lostlogin 9mo ago
Any chance you could expand that story?
- jcims 9mo ago
  I thought about it when I posted but it felt like an invitation to dunk on the cultures involved. In one case it was a communication pattern that I found to be very unprofessional by an entire team, the other was nearly instant and *intense* conflict between a former direct of mine and their new manager that I got sucked into the middle of.
- machomaster 9mo ago
  If you are interested in this cultural topic and how to practically modify your communication, check The Culture Map book.

palmotea 9mo ago

> 1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as disrespect or incompetence. So, instead of asking for clarification, many people just "do something" and hope it is acceptable. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society. Way back, when I first started working with Indian offshore teams, the contracting company at the time had a kind of intercultural training that addressed that issue. > Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so. That's exactly the advice they gave. They advised was to try to make your relationships and interactions as peer-like as possible. The more "authority" is present in the relationship, the more communication breaks down in the way you describe.

unsupp0rted 9mo ago
To what degree did this change the results?

sersi 9mo ago

> 1. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society. Having worked in Japan, while there is a strong respect for authority, there's also much less hesitation about asking for clarification. I worked with an Indian offshore team and in a Japanese company and, while there's a lot to dislike in Japanese office culture, this kind of pattern of behaviour doesn't happen. 2 & 3 do make sense though. I've had mixed result with your advice at the end. I'd say that it worked for about 30% of the offshore engineers I've worked with and indeed I had more success with juniors than with more senior developers.

cdman 9mo ago
I also worked with japanese, including on site in Tokyo and quickly learned that asking "did you understand it?" is useless. I always had to keep in mind to ask "what did you understand?".
vpribish 9mo ago
I worked with a lot of Israelis and Eastern Europeans - They's say no and argue even when they agreed :) it was fine.

conductr 9mo ago

> Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so. Very true. I’ve hired (super cheap) engineering talent and this is the key to getting a project to run the way a westerner expects; where everyone is constantly open to challenging each other, where everyone can bring ideas to the table, and where there’s no such thing as a stupid question. I’ve done this during a big phase of time others locally shunning this huge talent pool as the results were crappy/unpredictable. Even to the point they’ll hire local for 100x the cost. It’s just a management problem though and a pretty simple one at that. The other thing is if you train them in your style, keep using them on the next project if you can. It compounds if you have the ability to work with them over a longer time. You have to be very insistent that you’re not proposing the best solution at expect them as engineers to point out any opportunities for improvement. If something later has to be rebuilt or isn’t working well, sometimes it’s good (if it makes sense, case by case) to do a post mortem and understand why the version 2 wasn’t built during the version 1. I think that helps them really understand it in a concrete way if they’re struggling with it. In any case, I’d much rather take a budget for 1 local dev and spend it on a whole team of Indians and take on the management burden if it means retaining more equity or profits or building something I otherwise wouldn’t do myself due to scale.

lostlogin 9mo ago

> 996 culture. I hadn’t heard of this, thanks. Working 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

freakynit 9mo ago
Work cultures are brutal in SEA and South Asia countries. And there is no job security, no social security, no labour laws(on paper they are, but, are not applied) and no liveable pay(this is changing though).

figassis 9mo ago

This is one reason, the other is just fraud. Being from a developing country, I am well aware of the stigma of saying I don't know, which I had to strip out of me as I became an engineer to the point of me being immediately suspicious when someone tells me they know about some moldy complex topic, even if it's in their profession. The fraud part is that I developing countries, almost all activities that require some skill have lots of people claiming to be experts. 99% of them are lying. You take your car to a shop and they tell you they will solve your problem. With skepticism, (because they asked no clarifying questions) you try to give them some context and they tell you not to worry. 1 day later they tell you parts X, Y and Z need to be replaced, it will just cost $$$. You ask if there is no way the current parts can just be repaired, and they tell you no, they must be replaced. You ask what was the actual issue, and they tell you the parts are completely damaged, or worn out, need to replace. Sure, you pay, and they give you the car, works for a few days, maybe week, then breaks down. You plug in a portable OBD scanner and it tells you the exact component they just put in is failing (likely not even compatible with the car). You give them back the car, tell them since you paid $$$, you will only take the car back once it works perfectly, and you won't pay a cent more. They then spend the next few days looking for an actual expert, that comes in and repairs the original parts, for $, and they take the "new" ones back to the store and give you your money back. They don't know anything about cars, they experiment on yours, with your money, by swapping parts. This was easier when cars were less strict with parts. This is fraud, not face saving, and it's in every developing country.

unsupp0rted 9mo ago
You’re not allowed to admit it’s fraud. It’s just a cultural difference. You explained it wrong. You didn’t pay enough. You were supposed to try to become their best friend first. Anything not to say “well some cultures just have no problem committing fraud at any opportunity”
deleted 9mo ago
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mindentropy 9mo ago
Perfectly put. Scamming is a cottage industry. No ethics whatsoever. What I do is I go to the top guy, tell him I need an expert and nothing else. No experimentation whatsoever on my vehicle etc. I pay slightly extra for the troubles. Before I go for repairs I try to learn as much as possible to know what they will screw up next. If you go in as a layman, then it is fraud and incompetence central all the way.

blindstitch 9mo ago

Thanks for all this, what you wrote and the discussion that followed has been genuinely helpful, and I think it might help bridge some cultural divides that I've experienced when working with Indian people. Another question I'd like to ask of you is, do you see any aspects of the western style of cooperation that are the inverse? i.e. which create divides in which the westerner's ways of working can be the source of conflict?

freakynit 9mo ago
1. Same here. I too learnt a lot more from the following discussions. 2. None. We absolutely adore the ways westerners work. Your ethics, discipline, hardwork, attention to detail, inventive and creative nature, the support structures, and fair pay (and many more).

ASalazarMX 9mo ago

Could this cultural difference explain why they're set up LLMs to do work for them, though? No authority asked them to, but I guess it would look nice in their resume if successful.

freakynit 9mo ago
Two broad reasons (as far as I can think of): 1. A lot more can be done in a given amount of time. Looks good on resume. Recall that India is still extremely poor (dont get influenced by the GDP numbers.. ) and getting a job as fast as you can after college can make a real difference to your living standards here. 2. Our education system is shit. And so are our teachers(mostly). Meaning, when folks are out of college, they generally are not as competitive as maybe their counterparts from western regions are(not in terms of hardwork, but, knowledge and hands-on tasks). LLM's makes it possible to do complete much more complex work than otherwise was possible at current experience. Indians are extremely hard-working. The problem is people are extremely poor (~2400 median income... that's per YEAR). Even after adjusting for PPP. this translates to less than 10K USD/YEAR. Now think about living on 10K/year and supporting 5 family members (partner with 4 kids, or parents with 2 siblings).

gdilla 9mo ago

An Indian person basically is used to not making any decisions for themselves until maybe they're married off (and even then, probably not until age 40). /s

Aloha 9mo ago

Thank you for this cultural explanation - I've experienced the same thing with Japanese co-workers - there is often a "no" but to American ears its so subtle that it often goes in one ear and out the other.

freakynit 9mo ago
Both the cultures suffer from "a senior is always right" mentality. Therefore, with my juniors, I used to intentionally (sometimes, and mostly during early days of their joinings) make stupid little mistakes (harmless) and used to let those folks figure that out and then appreciate them on catching it. Worked like wonder. Never ever anyone hesitated to discuss anything with me anytime.. even personal issues many times :) You just have to make it easy for others to do their jobs. Removing barriers, of any kind, helps. This is even more true with juniors.

ponector 9mo ago

In my experience working with developers from India, there are two ways: 1. You have no authority and they ignore you. 2. You have authority and they become yes-men. Real dialogue: - Is it done? - Yes! But not yet.

freakynit 9mo ago
The sweet spot is being authoritative without being overbearing. When leadership feels supportive rather than controlling, people engage honestly... and that balance comes from experience.

to11mtm 9mo ago

> Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so. Semi related to this, one of the biggest 'breakthroughs' in building the right trust/rapport with an offshore team was sending an email to their leadership making it clear and on the record that "Comments against pull requests should not be used against the employee in reviews, if there is a recurring issue I will discuss it via other channels." That one email changed PR back-and-forth entirely, cause yeah I guess sometimes they'd get dinged for too many PR comments on some metric. At first their management wasn't thrilled, thankfully there was a good enough improvement in quality and defect rate that in a couple months they were won over.

freakynit 9mo ago
I missed adding this to the advice section. But glad you pointed it out and shared your positive experience with it. Thanks..
jgwil2 9mo ago
Do you mean that they were dinged if a PR they opened received too many comments? Can you elaborate on how the communication style changed after this? Like they were more willing to seek clarification/discussion?
- to11mtm 9mo ago
  > Can you elaborate on how the communication style changed after this? Like they were more willing to seek clarification/discussion? More willing to seek clarification and less likely to try to defend choices with 'This is what the scope of work said'. And also more willing to jump in on colleagues and my own PRs to provide feedback. Which was also an important part of how to frame the communication "I'm not telling them they are doing their jobs wrong, I am telling them how to do it better to make all the stakeholders happier." > Do you mean that they were dinged if a PR they opened received too many comments? It was never explicitly said at first, however the communication was inspired by past work experiences where yes, too many comments on a PR or similar review could get held against you for far longer than was productive or even healthy, and yes it was something the whole team had to deal with (i.e. very much a shared experience amongst colleagues.) In fact I'd argue that the time I've been at shops where people weren't afraid to give feedback has been about 50-50, while also noting that the shops that had a culture shift where giving feedback became OK and safe for all parties, quickly became more productive. Cause, the other thing to consider, is that people don't necessarily want to risk causing animosity by jumping into a colleague's PR and pointing out a problem, they don't want to be the guy that makes their colleague "look bad". Which is of course unhealthy, but again by re-framing the context of PR feedback for Taylorist robot management, you get better response from their management as far as buy in.

code_for_monkey 9mo ago

my managers are indian, and honestly Im struggling. Do you have any advice? I feel like im not allowed to ask questions, a lot of our processes dont make sense to me.

freakynit 9mo ago
Not the advice Im proud to give (or anyone should give), but the one that will work: Create dependency on yourself, company-wide, and make sure the boss knows about it. Avoid direct confrontation with your manager.

ErroneousBosh 9mo ago

banannaise 9mo ago

thtmnisamnstr 9mo ago