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I found a good discussion that I keep referring to on Jean Hsu's blog: https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/ask-vs-guess-culture https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/ask-vs

• pseudalopex 8mo ago
  Did you see the HN comments for Jean Hsu's 1st article?[1] Did any stand out? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176703
  • artwr 8mo ago
    Thanks for the pointer, I hadn't. I think there is a couple of interesting things. First, it's still somewhat orthogonal to the High context versus Low context cultures (see the Culture Map), as in you can have people with more ask versus guess culture in either communication contexts from my observations (at least among some low to mid context cultures, I don't have a lot of experience with very high context cultures). Another way to think about it is that it's a lot more local than the broader culture of a country, down to the family level, and you can see this in the US as many commenters have reported where they grew up in various different places in the ask vs guess spectrum. Finally, the US work environment is generally very "Ask"-leaning, in particular in Silicon Valley and it can take a significant amount of time to recognize where you have been raised on this spectrum versus what is required of you to be effective at work.