[jukvalim]

It's interesting how people bring their own context and culture into things - which is where I assume your comment comes from. Also another reason why one size fits all processes or methods are not a good idea.

My team is a monocultural one, in a Nordic country. We're remote by choice, and because some of us live in other cities. Nordic countries have the lowest power distances in the world, which is relevant to how social interactions work out. Also, in my experience, software developers here don't typically worry that much about their standing in the organization, or about advancing in the organization, or being kicked out. Of course some do, but I don't think it's a cultural focus here like it might be in some other places. If you look at the discussion forums for devs here, those concerns hardly ever come up. Talking about raising salary by switching companies is way more common topic.

We have plenty of time for deep work on other days too. It just that in earlier phases of the project there were more meetings, so we set up the deep work day to make sure one day can be totally uninterrupted.

When it comes to articulating problems, I feel our people are vocal enough. Not all the time, but if there's something annoying or frustrating during a sprint, I feel that it comes out during a retro. It's the process improvement ideas where I feel like I'm the most active one - which is fair enough, since it's an area of interest not all people have.