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Working culture: Asia vs Europe
Uncovering differences between two opposite cultures
6 months ago, I left my previous design career in Indonesia and moved to the Netherlands to work as a senior product designer in one of the biggest tech company in the country. It has been life-changing in many aspects of my life, but at the same time it’s been hard and just different than how I did things back home.
In Indonesia (and probably most Asian countries), we were so used to the idea of a hustle-culture — working day and night with stress and burnout to be our definition of a “normal working environment”. Despite that, with the growth of tech startups and new industries, there’s so much room to be whatever you want to be and your career can grow within a short period of time.
Fast forward to my first day working in The Netherlands, I was taken aback by how people value work-life balance — an crucial value that most people tend to ignore for the sake of money or career growth, and also how a diverse, international environment create so much room for communication errors and culture shock.
It’s interesting how two different working cultures can be normal for the locals yet so strange and frightful for the others. While most of the reason might lie on social behaviour and…
