The United StatesvsUkraine
アメリカとウクライナUSUA
Seen from the United States: each line below describes Ukraine relative to the United States.
Culture Map: eight scales
Erin Meyer's eight scales, sorted by how far apart the United States and Ukraine sit, largest gap first.
Filled dot: the United States, where you are looking fromHollow ring: Ukraine
Not placed8 scales
These scales are left unmarked: either Meyer leaves a country off the scale or no source places it, and drawing it anyway would be guessing.
- Communicating, Evaluating, Persuading, Leading, Deciding, Trusting, Disagreeing, SchedulingNo source places Ukraine on these scales
Hofstede: six dimensions
Scores from 0 to 100, sorted by the gap between the United States and Ukraine. They describe national averages, not either country's character.
Indulgence
Ukraine scores 54 points lower than the United States (14 against 68)
The United States 68, Ukraine 14, on a line from 0 (Restrained) to 100 (Indulgent).
Power distance
Ukraine scores 52 points higher than the United States (92 against 40)
The United States 40, Ukraine 92, on a line from 0 (Low power distance) to 100 (High power distance).
Uncertainty avoidance
Ukraine scores 49 points higher than the United States (95 against 46)
The United States 46, Ukraine 95, on a line from 0 (Tolerant of ambiguity) to 100 (Avoids ambiguity).
Motivation towards achievement and success
Ukraine scores 35 points lower than the United States (27 against 62)
The United States 62, Ukraine 27, on a line from 0 (Consensus-oriented) to 100 (Decisive).
Individualism
Ukraine scores 5 points lower than the United States (55 against 60)
The United States 60, Ukraine 55, on a line from 0 (Collectivist) to 100 (Individualist).
Long-term orientation
Ukraine scores 1 point higher than the United States (51 against 50)
The United States 50, Ukraine 51, on a line from 0 (Short-term) to 100 (Long-term).
What the sources say, theme by theme
Entries for the United States and Ukraine, side by side on wide screens. Each keeps its own confidence label and citations.
Design & quality
United States3 claims
At Google, engineers write a relatively informal design doc before writing code. According to Malte Ubl (2020), the point is not an exhaustive specification but a record of the trade-offs and alternatives considered.
Thin1 source2020us-design-1
Ubl says a design doc should be as long as necessary and as short as possible, and distinguishes it from a heavyweight waterfall-style specification.
Thin1 source2015Datedus-design-2
Meyer places the United States on the applications-first side of the Persuading scale. A book summary describes this as starting from conclusions and examples and favoring the practical how over the theoretical why.
Thin1 sourceus-design-3
Ukraine2 claims
At the ICPC World Finals, Lviv National University placed fourth in 2008 and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv placed fourth in 2010, both winning gold medals.
Attested1 source2026ua-design-1
Ukraine's Hofstede uncertainty avoidance (UAI) score is extremely high at 95. The outsourcing firm N-iX (2019) links this to a preference for detailed plans and background explanations. The article is written from the seller's side.
Attested2 sources2026ua-design-2
Failure & risk
United States2 claims
The Google SRE Book (2016) codifies the blameless postmortem. It identifies contributing causes without blaming individuals or teams and assumes that everyone involved acted with good intentions.
Well attested1 source2016us-failure-1
At F8 in 2014, Zuckerberg changed Facebook's motto from "Move fast and break things" to "Move fast with stable infra." His reason was that at Facebook's scale, the time spent fixing breakage outweighed the gain in speed.
Attested1 source2014Datedus-failure-2
Ukraine4 claims
In a July-August 2024 Deloitte and AmCham survey of 139 executives at member companies, 76% said prolonged blackouts affect their operations. At the same time, 88% said they were prepared for outages and 94% had or were developing a business continuity plan.
Attested1 source2024ua-failure-1
IT companies are reported to have handled blackouts by setting up coworking spaces with generators and Starlink and by subsidizing employees' backup power.
Thin1 sourceua-failure-2
Central bank figures reported by AIN.UA show IT service exports peaking at $7.3 billion in 2022 and falling to about $6.4 billion in 2024 (down 4.2% year on year). According to dev.ua, exports recovered slightly to about $6.66 billion in 2025.
Attested2 sources2026ua-failure-3
An article by the outsourcing firm Alcor, citing DOU surveys, says 38% of IT workers feel burned out at work. Thirty percent of IT specialists serving in the army receive payments from their IT employer.
Thin1 source2026ua-failure-4
Feedback & code review
United States3 claims
According to Meyer, Americans are often taught to wrap negative messages in positive ones (the feedback sandwich). For this reason she places the United States in the middle of the scale for delivering negative feedback.
Attested1 source2014Datedus-feedback-1
A blog explainer on Meyer's evaluating scale notes a common mismatch: Dutch and German colleagues take American praise at face value, while Americans find Dutch and German criticism too harsh.
Thin1 source2016us-feedback-2
A study of more than 70,000 GitHub pull requests from 17 countries (Rastogi et al., 2018) found that pull requests were more likely to be accepted when the reviewer and the submitter were in the same country.
Well attested1 source2018us-feedback-3
Ukraine2 claims
The outsourcing firm N-iX (2019) writes that Ukrainian engineers speak their minds on important technical decisions. This is a seller's claim, and no independent study was found.
Thin1 source2019ua-feedback-1
The recruiting firm unicrew (2026) writes that unless expectations are made explicit, developers may not push back hard on poor technical decisions.
Thin1 source2026ua-feedback-2
Hierarchy & decisions
United States2 claims
Meyer classifies the United States as egalitarian but top-down (HBR, 2017). People use first names and are encouraged to speak up, but the boss decides quickly, and the decision can be revisited when new arguments appear.
Attested1 source2017us-hierarchy-1
In the same article, Meyer reports that to Japanese managers an American boss can look flat on the surface yet highly autocratic in how decisions are made.
Attested1 source2017us-hierarchy-2
Ukraine2 claims
Ukraine scores high on both Hofstede power distance (PDI 92) and uncertainty avoidance (UAI 95). Edge Executive Services (2024) links this to multi-layered organizational hierarchies and a large number of rules.
Attested2 sources2026ua-hierarchy-1
The outsourcing firm Jappware claims that Ukrainian IT companies were early to drop rigid hierarchy and formal communication.
Thin1 sourceua-hierarchy-2
Communication & docs
United States4 claims
Meyer places the United States at the most low-context end of the Communicating scale. A book summary describes a preference for saying things explicitly and for repeating and summarizing key points.
Thin1 sourceus-communication-1
According to Bezos's 2017 shareholder letter, Amazon does not use PowerPoint. Meetings start with everyone silently reading a six-page narrative memo, and memos carry no author's name because they come from the whole team.
Well attested1 source2018us-communication-2
According to CNBC (2018), the practice began with a 2004 email from Bezos. He explained that a good four-page memo is harder to write than a 20-page slide deck because the narrative structure forces better thinking.
Attested1 source2018us-communication-3
According to a blog post by Slab, Stripe also rarely uses slides. Meetings begin with silent reading of a memo, followed by comments on the document.
Thin1 sourceus-communication-4
Ukraine2 claims
An Alcor article citing DOU surveys says 66% of IT workers work fully remotely.
Thin1 source2026ua-communication-1
N-iX (2019) says formality at first meetings is a sign of respect, and that the one-to-two-hour time difference with Europe makes it easy to overlap working hours. This is a seller's description.
Thin1 source2019ua-communication-2
Work & careers
United States5 claims
According to the BLS, median employee tenure in January 2024 was 3.9 years overall, the lowest since January 2002. In the private sector it was 3.5 years.
Well attested1 source2024us-work-1
- BLS: Employee Tenure in 2024 (2024)
At-will employment is the default in every state except Montana. Unless the reason is illegal, either the employer or the employee can end the employment relationship at any time.
Well attested1 sourceus-work-2
According to layoffs.fyi figures cited by TechCrunch, tech layoffs in 2024 exceeded 150,000 people at 549 companies. The peak was 2023, with about 260,000.
Attested1 source2024us-work-3
In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, 45% of US respondents work fully remote, the highest share among the top responding countries. Median salaries were $200k for engineering managers, $175k for back-end developers, and $138k for full-stack developers.
Well attested1 source2025us-work-4
In Staff Engineer (2021), Will Larson sorts Staff+ individual-contributor roles, which do not require becoming a manager, into four archetypes: Tech Lead, Architect, Solver, and Right Hand.
Attested1 source2021us-work-5
- Will Larson: Staff Engineer (2021)
Ukraine3 claims
In DOU surveys, the share of IT workers registered as FOP (sole proprietors) fell from 87% (2022) to 70% (2024), 57% (2025) and 49% (2026). Workers are moving to Diia.City gig contracts and employment contracts.
Well attested2 sources2026ua-work-1
Diia.City gig contracts, introduced in 2022, carry 5% personal income tax, a 5% military levy and social contributions of 22% of the minimum wage. As of October 2026 the regime had more than 4,600 resident companies covering about 217,000 specialists.
Attested2 sources2026ua-work-2
In DOU's December 2025 survey (4,522 responses), the median developer take-home pay was $3,450. A study by the law firm Juscutum and the Diia.City Union found that about 20% of IT professionals work from abroad.
Attested2 sources2026ua-work-3
Open source & community
United States2 claims
According to Octoverse 2025, the number of US developers on GitHub grew from 10.2 million in 2020 to 28 million in 2025, the most of any country. The US ranks second to India in open source contributors and first in total contributions.
Well attested1 source2025us-oss-1
- GitHub Octoverse 2025 (2025)
The same Octoverse 2025 report says the US, UK, and Canada more than doubled their developer counts from 2020 to 2025, while India and Brazil more than quadrupled. Its 2030 projection puts India ahead of the United States.
Well attested1 source2025us-oss-2
- GitHub Octoverse 2025 (2025)
Ukraine3 claims
GitLab is an open source project that Dmitriy Zaporozhets started at his home in Ukraine in 2011. In 2014 he turned it into a company with Sytse Sijbrandij from the Netherlands.
Attested1 source2022ua-oss-1
Grammarly (a product, not open source) was founded in Kyiv in 2009 by Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko and Dmytro Lider. Its largest engineering hub is still in Kyiv.
Attested2 sources2022ua-oss-2
The developer community DOU.ua's annual survey "Портрет айтівця 2026" (Portrait of an IT specialist) drew 14,631 respondents. The community publishes its own pay and contract data every year.
Well attested1 source2026ua-oss-3
- DOU: Портрет айтівця 2026 (2026)