I am a software engineer from the Ukraine working in a multinational company. My manager is located in the USA. I have a communication problem with my manager that I will explain with an example.
I have two tasks assigned to me - A and B. Task A has the earliest deadline. But to complete task A, I need to complete task B first, because task A depends on task B.
I wrote an email to my manager and asked to change the project schedule and exchange deadlines for tasks A and B, with explanations why I need to work on task B first.
I also know that there are no special time constrains for task A - we are in the middle of a release, so there are no visible problems with changing the schedule.
My problem is that I got no response on this email. I'm pretty sure my manager read the email, because he responded to another email (another topic) I sent same day. He intentionally did not respond, and I do not understand what that means.
I have the impression this is some feature of American corporate culture, because this is not a first case in my working experience when a manager in an American company behaved this way.
A manager from Ukraine or Russia would usually respond with yes or no. A manager from Western Europe would respond with yes or no, or would talk to me if he or she does not want to write a response for some reason. But in my case I have the feeling I'm communicating with a black hole - just no response. And I can not say that this manager does not like me - at least he supported my salary increase during the last review. I also know that this situation is not personal to me - other developers complain of the same problem.
So I would like to ask American nationals to advise how to interpret such behavior or even better, advise me what action to take. Even recommending me some good book or article about American corporate culture or something like that.
