[deepsun]

It's also culturally dependent -- I noticed US-based employees prefer to schedule a meeting for an idea and discuss/think/make decision on the meeting.

EU and even more so Asia-based employees prefer to first discuss the idea on multiple 1:1s for a long time, to discuss / think / make decision with everyone, come up with some harmony before any formal meetings. And the meeting itself would serve only ceremonial needs -- to let the manager officially declare the idea live.

That creates cultural clashes, when some people schedule a meeting to discuss something, but others decline or don't understand why are they here.

[908B64B197]

> EU and even more so Asia-based employees prefer to first discuss the idea on multiple 1:1s for a long time, to discuss / think / make decision with everyone, come up with some harmony before any formal meetings. And the meeting itself would serve only ceremonial needs -- to let the manager officially declare the idea live.

This is so that the manager doesn't lose face in front of his subordinates. In the US, if the junior employee has a stroke of genius during the meeting and comes up with a better idea than the manager, then the manager just looks good for hiring that guy.

[watwut]

> This is so that the manager doesn't lose face in front of his subordinates.

Not really, at least in my experience. Arguing against managers in Europe is common, sometimes I feel like more common then Americans expect. Americans tend to expect sort of submission - they interpret disagreement with boss as rudeness. "You can not say no to manager" is something Americans believe in and then they are shocked to come into meeting with Eastern European who just say "no" and acts as if it was normal.

The one on ones are to large extend about forming opinions, testing both ideas and arguments in safe situations, rethinking everything again. You can say something wrong in them and then figure it out next day and change opinion.

Instead of having one high stakes meeting where what you said is set in stone, you have to react instantly in well phrased arguments and don't have that time to think about others arguments.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

As a European-American dual-national this rings so true. I work in a tiny European tech company and it drives me crazy how challenging it can sometimes be to actually get people in the room simply speaking their mind on any subject. It’s a cultural difference that I think really holds back the pace of innovation.

[Solvency]

I always hear conflicting stories like this. On one hand, people claim Americans are often too artificially faux positive, too effusive, too <insert anything but the cold hard authentic truth>. And that you'll have no problem hearing from Scandinavians / Eastern Europeans / <insert here> exactly how they feel. Often to the surprise of many Americans, who are not used to such candid direct communication.

Obviously life isn't so black and white but I am wondering where these generalizations come from.

[watwut]

This is not about people in Europe not speaking their mind. It is about them not speaking their mind during organized scheduled meeting that has multiple people in it. These people will tell you what they think in one on one or a smaller group. They will tell you what they think spontaneously in discussion. But when you put 8 people of them and formalized it all, they go into formal mode and talk much less.

The two are two different issues, basically. Also, the directness of a discussion kind of depends on a topic. Americans tend to be hierarchical and tend not to want to hear negative things. Eastern Europeans are more likely criticize, express doubts or pessimism. These are seemingly taboos for Americans. But that is kind of orthogonal to the meetings topic.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

Being blunt is different from being truthful. We Eastern Europeans are so truthful that we end up not saying anything at all for fear of being too blunt. So what you get is all these 1:1’s where everyone has to make sure that everyone else is on exactly the same page before being open about it in a larger meeting. No space for disagreement or discussion in a larger forum!

I can’t speak about other Europeans or their culture, but here in Eastern Europe we historically had very little education in presentation, debate skills and critical thinking. So people have strong opinions, but little skill in presenting or confronting them with other perspectives and ideas. Of course, it never is all black and white. But this is my own experience with tech millennials at least.

Americans (at their best) are in some ways the opposite - they’re good at diplomatically navigating a variety of imperfect voices to arrive at a mutual agreed upon point of view. Coming with that (idealized) American mindset into Eastern Europe isn’t easy.

[JohnFen]

> they’re good at diplomatically navigating a variety of imperfect voices to arrive at a mutual agreed upon point of view.

I think this is reasonably accurate. It's rather necessary in order to be able to function in a nation where you are interacting with a huge variety of people with a huge variety of sensibilities, from all over the world.

[JohnFen]

> people claim Americans are often too artificially faux positive, too effusive, too <insert anything but the cold hard authentic truth>.

I am a genuinely positive person and my interactions reflect that. But I have learned to to be more dour when interacting with people from other countries (mostly from European nations) because they think I'm being phony.

The thing is... I'm not. Being dour to put them at ease is me being phony, but they'll accept that as being "authentic".

So much bizarreness all around.

[deepsun]

I immigrated to US, and I'd say Americans are direct. They just try hard to make the words very polite. So polite, that Europeans take that for positiveness or indirectness. But it's just politeness.

[andrekandre]

  > They just try hard to make the words very polite. So polite, that Europeans take that for positiveness or indirectness.

interesting, any good examples?

[kayodelycaon]

“I would recommend/suggest/consider changing this code to this.”

Read: Fix your shit. Or give me a good reason to not block your PR until hell freezes over and we all need ice skates.

Phrasing things like this works well with junior developers. They feel safer having an opinion or asking questions.

[JohnFen]

Thank you for this moment of enlightenment. As an American, I totally hear "I would recommend/suggest/consider changing this code to this" as a particular flavor of "fix your shit". That flavor being that the person saying it isn't mad about it, but you really do need to fix your shit. If they're mad, they'll say "fix your shit".

My enlightenment was that this meaning is so instinctive to me that I doubt that it would occur to me that it could be misinterpreted.

[JohnFen]

> I noticed US-based employees prefer to schedule a meeting for an idea and discuss/think/make decision on the meeting.

This is probably why the vast majority of meetings I've had in my career have been utterly without value -- productive discussions, brainstorming, and decision-making rarely happen in those meetings.

[sys_64738]

Do these meetings have an agenda? Make sure there's an agenda published BEFORE the meeting.

[JohnFen]

Yes. But the problem is that meetings are superficial in nature (out of necessity, given the format). So actual thought and consideration has to happen outside of the meeting.

[NoZebra120vClip]

I belonged to a small non-profit (part of a much larger international body). We had regularly-scheduled general meetings every month. These meetings were supposed to last under one hour and they were supposed to have a set agenda. Nevertheless, our leadership would frequently neglect to set the agenda, and so any issue could be raised by anyone at any time during the meeting, making for absolute anarchy. Now on top of that, none of us properly understood Robert's Rules or Parliamentary procedure, so every issue raised would just result in endless controversy and back-and-forth debating with little resolution.

When I became the leader, I was informed that we also needed to hold "Officers' Meetings" every month, just prior to the general meeting. The purpose of the Officers Meetings was to come to rough agreements on big issues, before they were put to a vote, and also to set the agenda for the upcoming General Meeting. With a set agenda on paper, we were much less likely to deviate from the action items listed therein.

Unfortunately for me, it proved impossible to schedule Officers' Meetings, because of facilities considerations and nearly nonexistent turnout. I held some at my own home and one person would attend. It was wholly ineffective for the intended purpose.

We also had trouble splitting off into Committees. If a significant event was planned, such as a breakfast, then it was logical to form a committee and then have them form up and communicate. This committee should be in touch via email/phone of course, but also hold planning meetings where details of the event could be hammered out. Unfortunately, due to low participation, these Committees never did their own thing, and instead were folded into the General Meetings, wasting everyone's time discussing things like bacon and napkin counts.

I really tried. I tried to stick to the prescribed structure of the meetings; I tried to set an agenda and stick to it; I tried to redirect endless debate and discussion into more productive action. But as a first-time leader, I found out just how limited my power really was, and the sacrifices we make as servants, when the organization is dysfunctional and we're just trying to stay together as an informal family unit.

[jltsiren]

From my Finnish perspective, discussion and decisionmaking are separate activities that need separate meetings. If someone wants to discuss something and then make the decision in the same meeting, I assume that they want to rubber-stamp the decision they have already made. If they come in prepared but the others don't, they have an advantage. If everyone comes in prepared, the actual discussion has likely already happened, and further discussion would be a pointless ritual.

The meetings where decisions are made can be large, because that gives legitimacy to the decisions. Discussions tend to happen in smaller groups, because it's impossible to have an actual discussion with more than about six people. If there are more people, some will dominate the discussion, while others will remain silent.