Most rooms worth getting into – well-paid jobs, promotions, serious opportunities – are calibrated for the culture you moved to. Not the one you grew up in.
This is where hard-skilled immigrants hit a wall. Not because they’re not good enough. Because nobody handed them the unwritten rules of a game they didn’t grow up playing.
I was socialised in Novosibirsk – Siberia, Russia. Then spent 15 years in Berlin, studied Cultural & Social Studies, and worked in tech, where soft skills are calibrated for Silicon Valley even when you’re sitting in a European office.
And I know why visibility and an online presence, such as LinkedIn feels performative and fake to so many immigrants.
Because it is built on US cultural assumptions – low-context self-expression, individual visibility as virtue, speaking to strangers as normal. For someone wired for high-context communication, collective loyalty, and earned visibility – it doesn’t just feel uncomfortable, it feels wrong at a value level.
And this is why it is easier for some to get noticed, self-promote and get out there, including sharing hilarious, touching stories on LinkedIn.
If you grew up with your parents saying:
“Just don’t stick your head out, you’ll be safer this way”
“Just sit there quietly, as long as the salary is coming in, all is well…”
and my favourite saying from home:
“Initiative is punishable”
…you’ll have a harder time than someone who was supported to show their progress.
There is a reason why your fear of social rejection and speaking up is so strong. The ways we were raised are not serving us right now on so many levels.
the answer isn’t to keep accommodating to the point it becomes uncomfortable So wherever you come from – you can still be visible and use the platforms by your own rules. No need to let those values stop you now
That’s exactly what we work on together: