From 27f00a147104a2c8d9cc0cb30fb46de4e9b27d58 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: José Mota Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 13:57:54 +0100 Subject: Post: Cultural prints impact behavior. --- ...l-prints-impact-behavior-and-judgement.markdown | 69 ++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 69 insertions(+) create mode 100644 _posts/2012-07-04-cultural-prints-impact-behavior-and-judgement.markdown (limited to '_posts/2012-07-04-cultural-prints-impact-behavior-and-judgement.markdown') diff --git a/_posts/2012-07-04-cultural-prints-impact-behavior-and-judgement.markdown b/_posts/2012-07-04-cultural-prints-impact-behavior-and-judgement.markdown new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a57b4a --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2012-07-04-cultural-prints-impact-behavior-and-judgement.markdown @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: Cultural prints impact behavior and judgement +tags: [ self-development ] +published: true +--- + +The greatest thing about attending conferences is that they expand your mind in +more than one direction. Particularly in my case, [Agile +Portugal](http://agilept.org) has definitely caused an impact on my assertion +of knowledge, judgment correctness and acceptance of life. More than anytime I +have come to realize that being a developer takes more than just knowing how to +type some kind of jargon, soft skills are just as demanding. + +I've come across American developers lately, not so young but still as +passionate. I felt their passion when they were talking about ways to improve +software development through Agile practices, and these are people with more +than thirty years of experience. There must be something they value greatly +that drives them forward and makes them argue about stuff in a reasonable yet +remarkable manner; it's called _culture_. + +A picture of culture +-------------------- + +Culture is a topic studied by experts and it's not surprising to see why. +Cultural prints affect people's ability to make decisions and judge behavior +and/or people. Political portraits of countries like Germany, United States or +Portugal are very different. + +In Germany people are better paid to do their job. This is a sign that they +trust people to do their job well; _and they do!_ It's considered to be a great +country to live in because german people are naturally good professionals; it's +in their blood, sort of speak. + +On the the other hand, Portugal has the exact opposite behavior. People are +badly paid because of we have this cultural cancer called «pull-it-off-ness». +It's in our blood to support corruption and get paid for it, we avoid paying +taxes whenever possible because we'd rather do it than start a revolution and +actually make things better. We talk more than we act because we're hipnotized +daily by this false sense of democracy and socialist government. + +The United States have this _American Dream_ thing. You gotta work for it but +you can achieve it. American people value action and knowledge over cheap words +and desperate bashing. They'd rather choose to be pragmatic over yelling at +dogma. Better yet, they actually believe they're capable of doing things and +they refuse to believe otherwise. There's this culture of enticement and +supportiveness towards one's will to chase something better. + +* * * + +So does this means I'm portuguese and I'm cursed for life...? well not exactly. +These confrontations I have every now and then mess with my core values and +that's a good thing, it keeps me focused on what really matters for me. I still +have a long way to go regarding my way of making the world a better place. + +Considering the impact of culture in software development: + +* A team is supposed to work together. I grow tired of cronic entropy. +* A team that's heavily influenced by such a bad culture such as my country's + won't succeed in the medium to long term. +* Individuals ought to constantly seek a better way to improve their work and + stop bitching about how lousy they are. And if you think about it, one does + not critique their laziness, rather they blame the system. Sometimes it + happens to me and I should be more careful. + +Teams should embrace the right side of their culture and dramatically reject +its bad parts. I finished my last talk with my personal goal in life: “be +happy”. It should have been _be happy always_ because my country wants to be +happy one way or another, and I like that goal but not its cultural approach. -- cgit v1.2.3-54-g00ecf