In the UK, "Asian" tends to imply "South Asian". Indians are quite good at playing the game and self-promotion. On the other hand East Asians less so. This is of course an over-generalization but I do think it holds some truth and that has to do with cultural differences, IMHO.

Timid, un-self-promoting Indian-in-the-UK here.

Yours is a broad generalisation, and one that has hurt my career in the past because of senior people who inevitably follow this chain of reasoning: "Indians are good at playing the self-promotion game --> shrikant is Indian, and he's not bigging himself up enough --> he must not be good enough --> meh, average rating, let's move on to the next person".

This hasn't happened everywhere, so I suppose it is down to organisational culture as well.

But also I guess my point is: even if broad generalisations hold "true", it's not cool to apply it to an individual.

I think this has more to do with the organization's structure. In a flat org you're more visible and your work speaks for itself. And in a hierarchical org you're very invisible, and the higher-ups can only see (without effort from them and you) what's right under their control and in most cases you're only visible to your manager and immediate team members.

This doesn't sound right to me - in a flat structure the people who self-promote go up in the implicit structure of the team so self-promotion is more important, not less.

I think it depends on your definition of self-promotion.

To me, performing and excelling at your job should be sufficient to make you visible. In a flat structure you're known as the responsibile party for project X, therefore, the self-promotion is happening automatically, as opposed to a deeply nested structure where your department's name is linked to the success of project X, and within the department your team takes the credit, and to be visible you'll have to actively self-promote.

Fwiw the Japanese girl on my team in UK back in the day kept winning prizes or whatever because she was such a diligent worker, so self promotion isn't actually everything.