Some Indian immigrants in Silicon Valley say that indirect feedback and shifting expectations around workplace language can make it difficult to tell what colleagues really mean. A Scroll.in feature published March 5, 2024, documents those experiences through interviews—not a representative survey of Indian workers or US workplaces. Its examples point to a mismatch between expectations and local conventions, made harder when feedback leaves the requested next step unstated.
What “decode corporate speak” can mean
A colleague says, “This is great. Let’s flesh out your document further.” Is that praise, a request for more work, or a tactful way of saying the document is incomplete? In the Scroll.in feature, this was one example of language that left employees uncertain about how their work had been received. It is an interviewee-reported example, not a universal corporate code.
When feedback softens criticism or a request, the listener may have to infer both the evaluation and the action expected. That interpretive work can be stressful, especially when a person is also trying to preserve a collegial tone. One unnamed interviewee described the process as first hearing words at face value, then working out what the speaker intended, deciding how to respond, and maintaining the tone of the conversation.
The same report quotes a woman from Mumbai working in Silicon Valley asking, “What’s the point of communication if you can’t understand what the other person is saying?” Her frustration illustrates the cost of ambiguity; it does not establish how often this happens across the workforce.
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Why the Silicon Valley setting matters
The feature concerns some Indian immigrants in Silicon Valley technology workplaces. Interviewees who had worked in Indian offices of multinational companies or on the US East Coast described Silicon Valley as especially difficult to navigate. That contrast is part of their reported experience, not evidence that every company in the Valley communicates the same way or that other US regions are straightforward.
There is also no single “Indian communication style” that can explain these accounts. People differ by workplace, team, role, personality, and experience. The more useful question is whether a particular team makes its expectations explicit—or leaves employees to infer them from euphemism, tone, and context.
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Inclusive language and the pressure to self-edit
The Scroll.in report describes both adaptation and frustration. One employee said she replaced “Hi guys” with “Hi all.” An unnamed technology employee complained that “Political correctness is taken to an extreme, where even in casual conversations, you need to be as careful as a lawyer filing a legal notice.” These are interview statements about how individuals experienced workplace language; they are not proof of a universal corporate rule or policy.
For a newcomer, adapting a greeting may be a small practical adjustment. The strain comes when the boundaries feel unpredictable: a person may not know which phrases are welcome, which could offend, or whether a casual remark will be judged more strictly than expected. Asking a manager or teammate for the group’s preferred wording can replace guesswork with a concrete norm.
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What research can—and cannot—explain
A 2022 field study by Yue, Thelen, and Verghese compared separate samples of 441 respondents in the United States and 354 in India. It examined leader “motivating language”—direction-giving, empathetic, and meaning-making communication—and found a positive relationship with healthy team culture in both samples. In the US sample, motivating language was directly associated with employee voice; in the India sample, the association with voice was indirect, through positive emotional culture and employee-team relationships. The authors caution that their one-time, cross-sectional online survey and self-reported measures limit causal conclusions. The study did not examine Indian immigrants in the United States, so it cannot explain the interviewees’ experiences as a group. Read the study in the International Journal of Strategic Communication.
A 2021 study titled “Dissecting culture at work” examined Indian immigrant scientists and engineers in the US industrial sector, within a larger NSF-funded project conducted from 2017 to 2019. Its abstract identifies perceived differences in social interaction, work practices, intercultural communication, and management. That context is relevant, but the available summary does not establish how widespread any specific difficulty is or support detailed claims about particular experiences. View the study record in Technology in Society.
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An older 2003 comparison involved European American students in the US and Indian students in India, not immigrant employees in American companies. Its distance from this workplace question makes it poor evidence for explaining the Silicon Valley accounts, much less for generalizing about Indian professionals.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How employees can get clearer feedback
When a comment could be praise, criticism, or a request, a brief clarification can make the next step explicit without challenging the speaker’s intent. These are practical suggestions, not scripts tested in the studies above.
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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →- Ask what should change: “Which part would you like me to develop further?”
- Confirm the target: “What would a finished version need to include?”
- Agree on timing: “When would you like the revision?”
- Check your interpretation: “I’m hearing that the direction is good, and you’d like more detail on the analysis—is that right?”
- Use the channel that fits: If spoken feedback is hard to retain, send a short written recap of the agreed action and invite corrections.
These questions turn a vague reaction into a discussion of the requested change, success criteria, and deadline. They also give the other person an easy opportunity to clarify if the original comment was intended as simple encouragement.
What managers can do to reduce ambiguity
Managers do not need to eliminate warmth or tact to be clear. They can pair encouragement with specific instructions: identify what is working, name what needs revision, explain what “done” looks like, and give a deadline when one exists. Direction-giving language, empathy, and trustworthy team relationships are relevant to employee voice in the 2022 study, although that study does not prove that any particular feedback formula will produce a specific result.
Teams can also state shared norms directly: which greetings they prefer, how to raise disagreement, and whether feedback is meant as a suggestion or a required change. Explicit norms make inclusion less dependent on employees guessing what is acceptable from brief remarks or unwritten rules.
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