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A comment on The Cultural Implications of Silence Around the World (2020).

Re:The Cultural Implications of Silence Around the World (2020) by sovietmudkipz on Sunday July 11, 2021 @12:43PM (#27802371)
In my experience at a software company located in the Midwest, I find most engineers engage in a hard listening culture. They have things that may want to say but do not want to say their thoughts for a myriad of reasons.

My (soft) heuristic towards engagement in meetings is to call on others and ask their thoughts. Sometimes I get a squeamish non-answer but sometimes I get a answer worth it’s weight in gold.

There are some who engage in a hard speaking culture, too. My heuristic operates to hear from everyone, when practical and possible.

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Re:The Cultural Implications of Silence Around the World (2020) by porknubbins on Sunday July 11, 2021 @03:10PM (#27803760)
What is meant by hard listening? I’ve never heard that. If engineers are reluctant to speak up its probably because years of experience that management/regular people just wants yes/no/we can do that type answers. Giving technical answers to things is sometimes perceived as aggressive or intimidating because the people who are supposed to be in charge often can’t follow all details. It takes a rare boss to truly trust the engineers.
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