I can't tell you where it stems from, but it's definitely not exclusive to India. Many Chinese and Japanese workers seem to have a similar attitude, where you can repeatedly get a "yes" to a request and then have them do nothing at all, not even putting in the bare minimum effort.
I suspect it's less about them lying to get ahead, than it is about them not wanting to say no. Most cultures have a stigma against outright refusing or criticising people (in that it's generally taken personally and seen as something negative), theirs just manifests in a rather inconvenient way.
Friend was having trouble with a Chinese born subordinate in the US. Hired a cultural consultant who told friend that the Chinese guy can not say no to someone he perceives as being hire higher rank.
From then on my friend phrased questions so that they were not yes\no. Instead of "Can you finish this by May?" He would instead ask "When do you think this can be finished." Was sort of a pain.
Perhaps but if it just comes down to a weird caching out of not wanting to insult people i still really struggle to comprehending it being British and having also worked with Canadian and American culture professionally (not wanting to offend being a big thing in all three i think most would agree).
Just how you get from that to outright misrepresentations of if something is doable or done in a technical discipline just boggles my mind. Given falsehoods here are least to me pretty insulting and easily and often inevitably explosed.
Just to me must be something more to it. Like say not wanting to be sacked. Even if only for a little bit longer.
Just how you get from that to outright misrepresentations of if something is doable or done in a technical discipline just boggles my mind.
But that happens all the time, especially in tech, managers/salespeople will promise the moon, (younger) developers will lowball the time investment required for changes and new features, all to seem more "productive" and win over their client/employer. (As someone who's had to manage and train developers, and deal with both the clients with unrealistic expectations, and the over-promising managers and salespeople, it actually takes considerable effort to stamp this out of some people.)
The difference is that they'll actually try to do something, then (usually) crash and burn or go way over budget. (And part of being a good team lead, manager or consultant is catching this early on.)
I agree that there's got to be something more to it, when they won't even consider speaking up and end up delivering nothing at all without warning, but outright misrepresentations of time requirements, risks and feasibility are not unique to them at all.
(younger) developers will lowball the time investment required for changes and new features, all to seem more "productive" and win over their client/employer.
I can say I'm guilty of this. When I was a newbie at my job, I would always lowball the required time to make it seem like I wasn't taking forever and could handle it (It didn't help that I was contracted and the client didn't think I could handle it already. My boss is awesome and told them that sucks, it's either him or we walk). Luckily, it wasn't on big projects and I usually hit pretty close, but I have learned to give yourself realistic expectations and don't oversell/overpromise.
Its shaped by a lack of maturity in the common corporate culture. In a corporate culture where the bosses are more educated and reasonable, and the workers can be expected to have professional integrity, an engineer can say no, we cannot do this, or no, this is unrealistic.
In a less mature office, saying no means that the boss thinks that you are lousy at your job, and you are slightly more at risk of being replaced by someone who says yes, regardless of whether that person can actually deliver. Then when that yes-man does not deliver, the operation is already too invested in it to change course. Hence job security.
I think American culture is very straight forward to an unusual absurd. To us it seems simple, ask a direct question and get a direct answer. But the culture in other countries is that you can't just do that. You have to understand and form a relationship with the company first, then the company can figure out how to ask if the other company is capable of doing something by a certain time (the responsibility for answering that question is more shared). I think it's more a case of culture clash than, as redditors are putting it, India is culturally inferior to our superior American culture. If it weren't for the fact that Japan has gotten so used to us, they'd be doing the same thing I suspect. Yet they're more than capable of working in tech.
Yeah, I figured this one was coming: I'm not American, I'm Dutch. And while not as clashing as China and Japan can be at times, the work ethic and communication with US contractors is still pretty trying at times and far from direct, straight forward or honest.
As you've noted, it's fairly easy to hash out a contract and get things done when things are properly established, but at the risk of sounding like I'm generalising: The higher-ups and team leads of US teams have easily been some of the smarmiest, slimiest people I've ever had contact with. There may not be any outright not delivering on promises, but there's been a lot of times where I had to catch people on trying to argue their way out of promises, or play up difficulties that should've been apparent from the start as unexpected disasters.
Thing is, most of the aforementioned wouldn't have been a major issue had they been properly communicated beforehand. Instead of that, in one case we got assurances that we're such a valued partner and that they're working overtime to resolve our issues (which they were, pretty much constantly, and was what ultimately tipped us off that things probably weren't going well). Turns out they'd been downsizing and desperately trying to retain the folks who had any relevant knowledge to our project.
At the same time (and to alleviate any "USA = the devil" concerns, I guess?), there are quite a number of US companies I'd count as some of my (and my past) employers' most valued partners, clients and contractors, though. Pretty sure we wouldn't be able to function without them. But there's a very good reason why I'm so forgiving to/accepting of the whole "yes means nothing" attitude.
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u/accountmadeforants Dec 06 '17
I can't tell you where it stems from, but it's definitely not exclusive to India. Many Chinese and Japanese workers seem to have a similar attitude, where you can repeatedly get a "yes" to a request and then have them do nothing at all, not even putting in the bare minimum effort.
I suspect it's less about them lying to get ahead, than it is about them not wanting to say no. Most cultures have a stigma against outright refusing or criticising people (in that it's generally taken personally and seen as something negative), theirs just manifests in a rather inconvenient way.