Thrown In vs. Watched Over: Getting New Hires Started in the Netherlands and Azerbaijan
Priya MehtaSeptember 21, 2026 6 min read
🇳🇱 Netherlands · 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
By Priya Mehta, The Global Office
A new hire's first week in a Dutch office typically ends with blunt, specific feedback on work that isn't yet finished — delivered without apology, because withholding it would be considered the unkind move. A new hire's first week in a Baku office typically ends with a senior colleague quietly checking that they have everything they need, delivered without being asked, because noticing is what seniority is for. Both are forms of care. Only one of them will feel, in the moment, like care.
Do's & Don'ts
🇳🇱 Netherlands
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Expect and ask for direct feedback early — Dutch managers and peers give it as standard practice, and requesting it explicitly speeds up your own ramp-up | Don't take blunt critique of your work personally; Dutch directness targets the task, not the person, even when the delivery feels unsoftened |
| Speak up in meetings from week one — flat hierarchies mean contributions are expected from everyone, not just senior staff | Don't wait to be formally invited to challenge an idea or a decision; hesitating to contribute reads as disengagement, not politeness |
| Use first names with managers and senior leaders immediately, even in your first week | Don't expect an extended, formal onboarding ceremony — most Dutch onboarding runs a structured but businesslike 90 days, mixing e-learning, workshops, and mentorship rather than ritual |
| Take work-life balance boundaries at face value — a colleague leaving at 5pm sharp isn't signaling disengagement | Don't assume flat hierarchy means no structure; expectations and deadlines are still clear and firmly enforced, just delivered without deference to title |
🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Show visible respect to senior colleagues and let them lead early interactions — hierarchy and age-based seniority are deeply ingrained and set the tone for how mentorship unfolds | Don't expect your manager to seek consensus before directing your work; instructions typically flow top-down, and this is a sign of clear management, not weak collaboration |
| Accept informal, relationship-based mentorship when it's offered, even if it's less structured than a formal program — being informally "adopted" by a senior colleague is a genuine and valuable form of onboarding | Don't push to openly question or challenge a senior figure's guidance in a group setting, even if you disagree — raise concerns privately instead |
| Invest in personal rapport with your direct manager specifically; Azerbaijani workplaces often treat this relationship as closer to family than to a typical reporting line | Don't assume a lack of formal onboarding documentation means a lack of structure — much of the real onboarding happens relationally, through who takes you under their wing, not through a handbook |
| Be patient with a slower, relationship-first ramp-up period rather than pushing immediately for full autonomy | Don't interpret quiet, non-verbal support (being checked on, included in informal gatherings) as insufficient onboarding; it is the onboarding |
Netherlands: Feedback as the Onboarding Curriculum
Dutch onboarding is structurally unremarkable — Rippling's checklist and Adams Multilingual Recruitment's guide describe a fairly conventional 90-day process blending live workshops, e-learning modules, and assigned mentorship, extending to six months for complex roles. What makes it distinctive isn't the structure, it's the content flowing through it: research consistently places the Netherlands, alongside Israel and Russia, at the most-direct end of the global negative-feedback scale, and that directness starts on day one rather than being eased into gradually.
GradGuide's breakdown of Dutch workplace culture frames the underlying logic as egalitarian rather than harsh: "contributions matter more than titles," flat organizational charts are common, and first-name use with senior leadership is standard practically from the first handshake. The mentorship that does happen tends to be functional and task-focused rather than pastoral — a new hire is more likely to get precise, unvarnished notes on a first draft than a warm check-in about how they're settling in, and Dutch colleagues generally consider the former more genuinely helpful than the latter.
Azerbaijan: Onboarding Through Relationship, Not Documentation
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Azerbaijan's onboarding culture runs almost entirely on the opposite logic. Commisceo Global's management guide describes a management style that is "hierarchical, centralized," where "managers tell subordinates what they want to be done and do not attempt to reach a consensus, as they believe doing so would make them look weak" — a structure that could read as cold, except that it's paired with an equally strong relational current: managers, per the same guide, frequently "treat subordinates as extended family."
That combination produces an onboarding experience that is light on formal documentation and heavy on informal, relationship-driven integration. A senior colleague quietly ensuring a new hire has what they need, without being asked, is doing real onboarding work — it just doesn't show up in an HR system as a completed task. Rivermate's cultural-considerations guide confirms the pattern generalizes: personal relationships and respect for hierarchy aren't soft add-ons to Azerbaijani business culture, they're close to the entire operating system, onboarding included.
The Reckoning
The core contrast is where the "care" in onboarding gets expressed. In the Netherlands, care looks like honesty: a manager who tells you plainly that your first deliverable missed the mark is, by Dutch logic, respecting you enough not to waste your time with false politeness. In Azerbaijan, care looks like inclusion: a senior colleague who brings you into informal gatherings and quietly smooths your path is doing the equivalent relational work, just through presence rather than pronouncement.
The trap for a newcomer going either direction is assuming the other culture's silence means neglect. A Dutch new hire arriving in Baku who receives no blunt critique in week one may wrongly conclude no one's paying attention, when in fact they're being carefully, quietly watched over. An Azerbaijani new hire arriving in Amsterdam who receives sharp, unsoftened notes on a first draft may wrongly read it as hostility, when it's the exact opposite: someone bothering to tell you the truth.
The Part the Brochure Left Out
iamexpat.nl, "The culture shock in the Netherlands that nobody really explains" — The piece describes new arrivals repeatedly misjudging blunt first-week feedback as a sign they were failing, only realizing months later that the same bluntness was applied evenly to everyone, senior and junior alike, and that its absence would have been the actual warning sign.
WUR International Students Blog, "My First Impression of Dutch Working Culture" — A new international hire described their first team meeting as disorienting because junior staff openly disagreed with a supervisor's proposal within minutes of it being raised, and it took several weeks to understand this was normal collaborative practice rather than a breakdown in respect.
Expat.com, Baku forum ("Baku, a City of Extremes for the Expat") — A contributor described their onboarding at a Baku-based firm as almost entirely undocumented on paper, with the real integration happening through a senior colleague who took it upon themselves, unprompted, to explain unwritten office norms over the first few weeks — support the contributor said they didn't realize was mentorship until well after the fact.
Foyer Global Health, "Expat Life in Baku" guide — The guide notes that new arrivals frequently underestimate how much informal, relationship-based support structures (rather than formal HR processes) carry the weight of integrating a foreign hire into an Azerbaijani workplace, and advises leaning into invitations to informal gatherings early rather than waiting for a structured onboarding plan that may never fully materialize.
Conclusion
If you're heading to Amsterdam, brace for feedback that will feel, for the first month, harsher than it's meant — and understand that asking for more of it, not less, is how you'll actually accelerate your ramp-up. If you're heading to Baku, stop waiting for a formal onboarding packet that documents everything, and instead pay close attention to who's quietly including you, because that person is your real onboarding program. Neither approach is more caring than the other. They just spend the effort in different currencies — one in honesty, one in presence — and mistaking either for its absence is the fastest way to feel unwelcome somewhere you're actually being looked after just fine.
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Photo by Yan Krukau via Pexels
Priya Mehta
Staff writer covering financial markets and corporate strategy. Has strong opinions about spreadsheets.