31–40 of 189 posts
> Australians typically play down their achievements, while Americans like to talk themselves up. Americans naturally read to Australians as boastful, while Australians naturally read to Americans as meek American culture is not a monolith. This can vary greatly in different regions or different subcultures.
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…
The circle jerk enthusiasm and camraderie really does help to keep a lot of people motivated and focused on providing for the company. While it might feel over the top, it serves a purpose, and gives people a sense of community and belonging which is often hard to find in the modern world. Plus it stops them from being depressed thinking about how mundane their life is, spending 60+ hours a week fixing the CI pipeline.
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…
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…
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If you have this absolutist attitude why would you expect anyone to ever be honest with you? Of course people are going to pretend that they believe in the company mission. Not doing so puts their livelihood at risk because of people like you.
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 played the game for a while at one of my past jobs. I knew what I was doing and that I didn't really care, but I wanted to get more money and that required playing office politics. It did work for quite a while, that is until I had some hard times in my personal life that made keeping up the facade unbearable. Within a short period of time I had people worried about me, even though I still did all job duties comple…
After being highly ambitious for almost 10 years and literally moving across the world, changing countries several times with a month's notice to find top opportunities, I found that my contributions were often neglected in the end. I would get plenty of pats on the back, but never any reward. I never once got a bonus, not once in 10 years.
One time when I asked for a raise from my boss, of a highly successful crypto project in Germany with hundreds of millions in the bank, he acknowledged that I was one of their best developers and offered a 2% salary increase... This is in crypto sector so we both understood that this doesn't even cover CPI inflation! When I suggested that I might leave if I didn't get a higher raise, he said that I was putting the entire project in jeopardy (using even harsher terms) and yet didn't offer anything more than 2%. I was told by an insider that he was paying himself at least 30k EUR per months! They had millions of cash sitting in the bank and I was on a modest senior dev salary by US standard. I had been there 2 years and was instrumental to securing their 300 million market cap blockchain and had just led a very successful refactoring of a complex sub-project in just 6 months. I still can't understand what happened. I quit. I was demoralized after that.
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…
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I don't view Australian culture as unusually meek. And I also don't view Americans as boastful as a generalization either. Most Americans, in my experience, are perfectly happy sitting at the bottom of a company, being underpaid, and doing nothing to stir up any change, for better or for worse, just like everywhere else.
People with a combination of talent, vision, and confidence enough to warrant support for their stirring of the proverbial pot are rare. And I'm sure that's true everywhere.
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…
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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…
I also served in the Marines and grew up in Massachusetts, two places that really embrace sarcasm and gallows humor. Merging into the California tech sector, the enthusiasm, sunny demeanor and inability to take being picked on as a demonstration of affection… it was a difficult adjustment.