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What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

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Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#11

Post by kurthr »

jongjong wrote: post #6

These days, you need to fake optimism in order to get or keep a job. Reality of this industry is that if you hit any hurdle at all during your career... Whether it is your own fault or someone else's, it may trigger a kind of avalanche effect because you won't display quite the same level of extreme optimism that they want to see... Successful people in tech tend to conflate naivety with optimism and see it as a sign…

I think the parent's experience has as much to do with being remote and at a satellite office as anything else. You're not going to hear a lot of bitch/moan on conference calls or even on Slack (which everyone knows in monitored).

Granted I work in Silivalley, but I'd say that above a certain level/age, if you don't show a certain base of cynicism in private you're not taken seriously. I mean, if you've seen the dotcom bust, and the 2008 collapse, you're looking at current conditions and asking whether it's worth it right now. The tension on the bubble appears to have exceeded safe parameters.

Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#12

Post by kazinator »

> Australians typically play down their achievements, while Americans like to talk themselves up

You can boast, as an Australian, even using dirty double entendres in reference to your sexual prowess. The rules are that you have to be using an American accent, and it has to be your turn fronting AC/DC.

Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#13

Post by eli_gottlieb »

denkmoon wrote: post #2

I'm an Australian working for a US big tech company, the culture thing is interesting to me. What I see from corp and the US side very much matches the "Americans tend to be enthusiastic about their company mission - in the extreme, believing that they’re saving the world" statement, but I always wonder how genuine it is? When your access to healthcare is directly tied to your enthusiasm for the company mission, it s…

A lot of people are deeply cynical about the front they have to put on at work, and a lot of people are also self-selecting into roles and workplaces requiring less of a front.

Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#15

Post by [deleted] »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #5
denkmoon wrote: post #2

I'm an Australian working for a US big tech company, the culture thing is interesting to me. What I see from corp and the US side very much matches the "Americans tend to be enthusiastic about their company mission - in the extreme, believing that they’re saving the world" statement, but I always wonder how genuine it is? When your access to healthcare is directly tied to your enthusiasm for the company mission, it s…

Trust me, nobody gives a flying shit about their companies dogshit useless mission or downright useless and laughable company values. They just pretend to in order to get brownie points with upper management. It's just playing the game. And I'm convinced the ones making the values themselves do so to see who will fall in line.

[deleted]

Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#16

Post by jjtheblunt »

Aeolun wrote: post #4
denkmoon wrote: post #2

I'm an Australian working for a US big tech company, the culture thing is interesting to me. What I see from corp and the US side very much matches the "Americans tend to be enthusiastic about their company mission - in the extreme, believing that they’re saving the world" statement, but I always wonder how genuine it is? When your access to healthcare is directly tied to your enthusiasm for the company mission, it s…

> Maybe I'm just a cynical aussie, but how can you possibly be enthusiastic for (eg.) putting ads infront of as many eyeballs as possible? You can be enthusiastic about a job done well, even if it’s not necessarily one you believe worth doing.

This looks like an assertion with spotty applicability

Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#17

Post by kasey_junk »

I had a, kind of, opposite experience. I worked for an Australian company as an American in the US.

My experience with the culture was the opposite. The Oz folks tended to be boastful with a chip on their shoulder. This was annoying as an employee but caused real problems when dealing with regulators and other companies. A big successful aus company just can’t throw its weight around in the US like at home.

That said, they eventually figured it out and have become quite successful.

I made some great friends at that company and picked up some Aussie slang that I still use today.

Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#18

Post by bigtones »

I worked for a California based American tech company while living in Perth, Australia for the last two years. All of what the OP says rings true, but I can tell that he is living on the East Coast of Australia because living in Perth we have literally no common business hours with the US West Coast which is brutal. I had to start work at midnight and work through the night for Zoom meetings and customer interactions and work on Saturday morning.

They job pays well and the people are lovely, and Australian culture has become a LOT more like the US over the past decade. Now we even have Black Friday sales but no conception that was invented because of the US Thanksgiving holiday.

Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#19

Post by YeOldSalt »

Canadian here- worked for Salesforce in Sydney for 4 years and can say working for a big US tech company in Australia definitely has it's pros and cons. APAC business units are an after thought for companies with U.S HQs which can be good because as long as targets are getting hit no one really pays close attention to anything else going on. Biggest downside imo is career mobility/progression.

Re: What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

#20

Post by msy »

There's an additional issue with timezones I'm surprised he didn't mention - you're off by a day. This means nobody is around on your Monday because it's US Sunday and conversely US Friday is your Saturday morning. This means you either need to adapt to having 4 days a week of overlap, or you need to shift your life to accomodate 7am meetings on a Saturday morning.

There's also regular chaos with the mis-matched DST windows meaning meetings will swing about by 1-2 hours multiple times as the seasons change depending on whose calendar created them, it's manageable but inevitably there's misses and confusion or someone's 8am suddenly becomes a 6am without rescheduling.

The bigger issue however is if you're the AU leg of a global firm with a US plurality: If there are teams in the UK or EU for example there's simply no way of operating with overlap that doesn't involve someone regularly having meetings in the deeply inhospitable early hours of the morning.

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