Beware of working for a manager from a different country

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I work in a field in the US where about 95% of the staff is first generation immigrants. Almost all the managers grew up in different countries. My current manager did not grow up in the US - but he is a great manager. He comes from Eastern Europe. I have never had a manager that grew up in the US.

Some countries' work cultures are fundamentally incompatible with people who grew up in the US. Avoid East Asian managers - if you end up being managed by one I strongly suggest looking for another job ASAP. Their work culture is toxic, and they will find Americans/UK/Australian people fundamentally insulting. They will see you as disrespectful to authority, and you will see them as disrespectful to workers. If you are a woman, you will find them misogynistic. If you are black or gay - oh boy - they will hate you and find ways to get rid of you from day one. It would be a waste of time to take it to HR.

I am in a weird position of not really regretting my current career choice but regretting my general career choice. If I had to do it all over again, I'd pick a different career path that involves a heavier mix of my own culture.

Some career highlights of mine that got me to post this:

- I once started a job and about 6 weeks in, my 6 month old daughter went to the ER. My manager at the time would not let me leave work and go to the ER. I had finally said, "I am leaving, deal with it." I left that job shortly after.

- I had another job where the higher up manager (boss's boss) changed. The new manager got deeply offended that I spoke up at meetings and would ignore me. It was like I wasn't even talking. I would say something and he'd just ignore it. These meetings had 3 people (including myself) which made it extra weird. He would only talk to my immediate manager. He treated every meeting as like a "meeting with the emperor."

- I had another manager - not East Asian - who also came from a very "male dominant hierarchical culture." I worked for this guy for 3 years, for some damn reason. He also did not like people under him speaking up. He was strictly one direction. I realized if I just did what he said I pretty much could slack off because if he didn't tell you to do something, you shouldn't do it.

- I had a job with an East Asian boss who openly told the entire team of an opening, and he said "we are looking for a Chinese guy to fill this job." In my field, its called the "Chinese Mafia." When a team gets a Chinese manager, magically the entire team becomes Chinese. They are misogynistic as heck and I've never come across a Chinese women managing Chinese men - its always Chinese men managing Chinese women. I met one Chinese woman manager but she had a team of 0 and her role was symbolic.

Nothing will ever be done about this because our mindset of racism and misogyny is centered around Westerners being racist and misogynistic.

You should buy a mirror.

mindless one-liners won't contribute to an intellectual discussion. Care to elaborate?

He's not wrong. You don't get to pick your boss, but you can find some combination of changing your job and changing the way that you interact with the bosses. If there is a consistent issue across multiple bosses from multiple regions of the world, the first place to look is in the mirror.

The folks on this board are going to have more of a challenge with both of those parts than the general population, but it's not impossible. I used to work in China and once I figured out how to communicate to them how hard I was working, even if I wasn't really working that hard and was goofing off during half the time I was working, things got easier. Learning that the service I was providing wasn't the one that I thought I should be providing and just doing as I was told helped a lot.

There are going to be varying opinions from these foreign born managers and even within their culture they may vary a bit. But, recognizing that the rules will change a bit depending upon where the manager got his or her ideas from and playing along is usually good for your career. Assuming that you even care about such games.

I've always had Australian managers but on two occasions managed by an Englishman and on another a white south-African. I think there are cultural differences that mean they don't actually get how a workplace operates together in an Australian context.

The Englishman was quite class conscious and his attitudes were a little foreign to me when it came to his views on people he deemed as "uneducated" or "less qualified".

The South African was rude and unrefined.

I imagine having an Asian or middle eastern or eastern European manager can be different but can't speak from experience.

The same could easily be said by some about employees from different countries, but that could be construed as racism.  There has been only one instance in my career of an immigrant manger treating everyone badly, and he ended up defecting to a rival corporation and taking copies of all our notes and drawings with him.  This was just a Fluke.

Yes that's my memory of both foreign managers I had. They were individually accused of being racist by at least one staff member, but my recollection was that they were both horrible to everyone.

Nearly all of my managers in N. America were domestically born and showed clear double and triple standards toward non-white Americans. One co-worker was taken to task for sitting down during a 10mminute break he was legally entitled to, the bosses' boss told the boss to make my coworker take a break elsewhere if he wasn't up to no good. N. American co-workers received promotions after being absent without cause for 1/4 to 1/3 of the time, to say say nothing of all the racist and homophobic slurs used. There's an ols saying, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't". I say to Hell with that.

That's a separate issue. There is a power differential between all managers and employees whereby managers have the power weaponise performance management

Everything from racism, ableism, homophobia, sexual harassment and classism is tolerated by most workers and not reported because the consequences of reporting your boss is rarely beneficial.

_____________________________

"Whistleblower retaliation "

At home Depot, they have an "aware line". A hotline for employees to tattle. According to some Reddit articles (which are not always correct), aware line plays the message to the manager (the manager hears your voice and can take revenge against you)

The best managers I have been under were English. The worst by far were Welsh. There were exceptions with both buy in general this is how I found them to be. Having said that there are some awful management styles from England which I am told are "Traditional" (The opposite to todays English managment styles) where the old method was to close off all communication and only communicate via undermanager "Inbetweens" which does not work at all because these inbetweens (Usually Welsh living in Wales) then take advantage of that and one has no where to go to complain so one gets serioualy exploited and there is no other route than to eventually leave or stay like I did and end up hit with burnouts/breakdowns.
But it really does vary from person to person.

A lot of businesses have one of those as HR typically is responsible for protecting the company. I have used that line at a different employer and it can cause massive headaches for managers that are abusing their authority, even if they aren't ultimately fired. Just being on corporate's radar as a potential lawsuit risk can have a potential impact on their career prospects when it comes to promotions. I know for a fact that people knew I was the one that called and I wound up walking off the job a while later over other issues.

It's not a separate issue, the workplace in N. America is rife with racism, homophobia and all of the multiple standards that come with them, they are some of the primary reasons for The Great Resignation.

While the reasons you have provided are valid, weaponising performance management is more broader. A manager simply does not "get on" due to personality differences or because the worker looked at them the wrong way or because of gossip.

I worked with a female who was a PA for a director and she was highly competent but because she was overqualified (she had an MBA ) her boss knew she wouldn't hang around so found somebody else to replace her and looked for ways of removing her. One morning she was told her nose-ring was unprofessional and non-corporate. The demand to remove jewellery was sufficiently demeaning enough for the PA to resign and find another job.

Secondly the great resignation has more to do with lockdowns and many younger people felt constrained and trapped and it changed perspectives that life is too short to be stuck in one place and forced them to re-look at their careers and dead end jobs. Many young people suddenly wanted to change careers, move/travel and see the world

Have a friend make the call.

If you ever need to make the call, give me the number and a script with what you'd like to say. They won't recognize my voice.

The more I read about it the more the workplace sounds like some kind of consensual slavery, instead of slaves being forced its slaves signing up willingly and begging not to be released from their bondage.

The faster society can get UBI the better imo.