Why Russians do not smile (2002) | Hacker News
Now replay the same situation in another ("non-friendly") culture. Most of the "not-friendly" cultures would invite you to a free beer, asking what happened etc.
Estonian here. At Skype (10+ years ago) I observed, that members of large cultures (American, British, Hindu etc.) had real trouble adjusting to the predominantly Estonian-based engineering culture. Probably because they had never had to adjust, commonly people adjust to _their_ culture as it tends to dominate large organizations. But once they did make an honest attempt, that was always most welcomed and gained them a large amount of goodwill. Our US CEO going to a sauna with 20 naked engineers... I’ve also seen the “how are you” thing described in comments unfold. A Hindu pm had the…
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