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The more positive spin on "lying", at least in my experience, was the cultural emphasis on 'pride' or 'saving face' (which, to be sure, all cultures have some of this, but some expect you to leave it at the door in business matters). I worked with more than a handful of remote developers on projects over the years, and had more troubles with ones in India than in other countries. The troubles almost always stemmed from variations of "this is what needs to be done. do you understand?" followed by a lot of "yes" affirmations. Time would go by, and it would become painfully obvious that there was a basic non-understanding of the task at hand. This happens on every project - even face to face ones, no doubt - but it happened disproportionately with remote developers in India, and interpreted it as a cultural thing of not every wanting to publicly(?) admit to not understanding something, even if it meant jeopardizing project timelines for the rest of the group. This has been several years now, and my sample size was small, but it's also not been terribly out of line with war stories I've had from other colleagues over the years. On the flip side, I did a code review of a project done by a team in .. Ukraine, and I nearly cried at how well done the whole thing was - good tests, decent docs, good structure, etc. It was some of the best code I'd ever seen in 18 years of doing this professionally. I also know that team was not found trawling odesk and trial and error, but was put together via word of mouth and referrals over several months, then treated as a full long-term team, not just a one-project-and-done group. |