zlacker

>>femfos+(OP)
I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous again" makes your reasoning clear without beating around the bush. How can you twist this into something sexist?

>>igorkr+5i
If I'm sexist then I could choose to make such a remark only if it happens to be a female colleague. If male then sleep(). Sexism achieved.

If you're not from the U.S. you have to understand the background of mendacity that flows through nearly the entire culture. That's a big part of the backdrop for fairly deep levels of distrust, whether it's of a company, one's colleague, the gov't, etc.

For example-- I was watching a political show where the question was something about global warming. One of the guests gave a reply that sounded vaguely reasonable but wasn't clear. The host tried to rephrase the question, and the same respondent again gave a suspiciously confusing reply. This caused the host to drill down on a simpler question-- did the guest believe that global warming was real and that human activity has contributed to this global warming? This time the guest answered a different question, addressing the reality of global warming but ducking the issue of causes. This went on for about 45 seconds before the host finally forced the guest to give a response that revealed the guest was in fact a climate denier. Honestly, it was like watching that scene in Blade Runner with the Voight-Kampff test, except on humans.

Being an American myself, I could immediately tell what the guest's purpose was: to sound like they agreed with the other (sensible) panelists, in order to give more credibility to a climate denial talking point that their job depends on. It's a planned strategy essentially of "denial-in-depth"-- try to sneak FUD into an otherwise good faith discussion, and if that doesn't then reveal your crude talking points for what they are.

In a weird way, the process of figuring out someone's level of earnestness makes me think of the "Sie" to "du" journey in German. Except here in the U.S., it's a slow slog of figuring out exactly how a friend spouts bullshit and under what circumstances, and then figuring out if there's enough earnestness left to become close friends.

>>jancsi+iv
Wow, that's a pretty deep, insightful and harsh analysis of your own culture. You've found exactly the words to express something that I noticed in the states as well, but couldn't quite put my finger on.

Did you figure this from the outside, so to speak, spending time abroad and immersing in a different culture? I've found that most people sort of start noticing cultural blind spots only then.

>>throwa+Ry
The US is a diverse place. The culture described by GP fits the wealthy and management classes well. Working class folks tend to be a lot more forthright, often to their detriment in many circumstances, but there are huge swathes of American culture in which folks speak frankly about basically everything.

>>humanr+ZI
Yes. If you aspire to "be somebody" then reputation management is important. But if your entire career will be spent working for employers who drug test and ask you if you've been in jail, but don't Google for your name, and you're not important to have the Google results of your name actually be about you anyway, then what is there to worry about?