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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

#131

Post by sopooneo »

esperent wrote: post #60
RustyRussell wrote: post #57

Worked for American companies for 25 years. Generally Americans come across as more confident, and yet conform to hierarchy in a way I've never seen en-masse in Australian culture. It always seemed to be that only the most weirdo Americans are blind to relative status, whereas for many Australians it's the norm? Employment-at-will takes some cultural adjustment, too. But for tech folks tends to be a net win. You just…

> It always seemed to be that only the most weirdo Americans are blind to relative status, whereas for many Australians it's the norm? As an Irish person, I have the impression that Australia is very similar to Ireland in this regard. I came across a survey years ago that asked a question along the lines of "in the workplace, is the manager/boss higher status or equal to the staff they manage?" (paraphrasing because…

Could it be kinder, at times, to play to the cultural norm? If people have been raised to say "sir" to their boss, could asking them to do otherwise cause them discomfort without benefit?

I have struggled with this myself, as I don't believe work hierarchy should convey any fundamental difference between people, and we are best off treating each other as equals.

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

#132

Post by watwut »

liontwist wrote: post #102
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say there are specifically some things my fellow Australians do have do in the USA that we would not in our home country. To my fellow Australians; when you go for the big tech job interview you often have to memorize the company mission statement and values. Yes it's a complete wank. You'll never use it internally. But i have seriously been asked about the companies mission statement for Meta, Google, Amazon…

Reading this thread I’m realizing maybe Americans better understand organizational politics, and this social technology is an unappreciated contributor to productivity. I agree this kind of thing is performative, but let’s steel man the other side. You are looking for a place to spend 8 hours a day doing your most skillful craft, and you don’t want to know what the organization is trying to achieve? Yes I understand…

Those manifestos are designed to sound good. They are not designed to express what the company is trying to achieve or rewards.

There is zero serious thinking involved in learning them. It is all pretensions, you know it, management knows it, employees know it.

OP understands organizational politics well - they learned them and they understand it was for passing the interview.

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

#133

Post by robbiep »

hetman wrote: post #48
thayne wrote: post #22

> 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.

Suppose you very crudely modelled the spectrum of American attitudes on this topic using some kind of bell curve. I don't think many people across the pond realise just how far apart the American and Australian bell curve means would be. These kind of "the truth is unknowable" truisms may sound wise but don't really teach us very much about reality. On average, Australian culture views anyone, who even passively demo…

You used a shit example with the Woolies CEO - he was immediately absolutely reamed on every medium because of the sheer transparency of the stunt - him in his shirt with name tag in an empty shop and then chucking a wobbly when he didn’t like the questions. He blew it and he looked like a tool.

I find the obsession we have with saying we have a problem with success absolutely does not translate to my lived experience here. I see it on the national stage where the moment someone fucks up everyone piles on, but usually they’ve been on a path to being a flog for a long time anyway and they need, at the very least, a reality check.

Think how much better Elon musk’s headspace could be if one person in his circle had told him ‘you are mortal’ regularly along his journey of multiple triumphs

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

#135

Post by liontwist »

grey-area wrote: post #121
liontwist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this thread I’m realizing maybe Americans better understand organizational politics, and this social technology is an unappreciated contributor to productivity. I agree this kind of thing is performative, but let’s steel man the other side. You are looking for a place to spend 8 hours a day doing your most skillful craft, and you don’t want to know what the organization is trying to achieve? Yes I understand…

‘Adult’ and ‘serious thinking’ are not the words I’d use to describe this behaviour. It’s extremely bizarre and cult-like when viewed from other cultures and comes across as insincere (which it is) and the very opposite of serious thinking - it is performative loyalty of the type that kings used to ask of their subjects. American mission statements often have very little to do with what the company does, or even the…

> it is performative loyalty of the type that kings used to ask of their subjects.

Master/servant is a relationship as old as time. You can acknowledge and navigate it or pretend it doesn't exist.

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

#136

Post by liontwist »

tolciho wrote: post #119
liontwist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this thread I’m realizing maybe Americans better understand organizational politics, and this social technology is an unappreciated contributor to productivity. I agree this kind of thing is performative, but let’s steel man the other side. You are looking for a place to spend 8 hours a day doing your most skillful craft, and you don’t want to know what the organization is trying to achieve? Yes I understand…

The Manhattan project, which by some accounts was a fairly large and complicated project, had no mission statement known to most people doing their daily work to who knows what end. Sure, you could go with "stick it to the nazis", and they did have some advertising spam to that effect, but that's down in the "like, duh?" (or less polite forms) as far as mission statements go. Put another way, how does reciting the mi…

I don't see how this comment relates. I'm telling you how to get hired and succeed at a corporation.

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

#137

Post by conradfr »

pythonguython wrote: post #104
liontwist wrote: post #94

> Americans tend to be enthusiastic about their company mission - in the extreme, believing that they’re saving the world I would explain this as commitment signaling. I don’t know if they really believe it, but they want to show they are part of the team and the talking points. Adults use language in a less literal way than introverted engineers may be comfortable with.

This also seems generational to me. I’m an American younger than 30 and the only people at my company who embody this are the senior people over the age of 40.

Maybe that's just because the stakes of losing your job are higher once you move up the ladder, have kids etc.

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

#138

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

missedthecue wrote: post #118
dsr_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, the most likely cause of someone being wealthy is that their parents were wealthy. But almost every wealthy American tells a story about how they did it by themselves, ignoring the schools that they attended, the services which were available to them, the people their parents associated with, and the ability to make high-risk investments because they had a built-in security net.

80% of US millionaires are first generation

Yet economic mobility, measured in terms of the likelihood that you die in a different income decile than you were born into, is lower in the USA than almost anywhere else in the developed world.

How to reconcile? It's fairly easy ... there aren't that many millionaires. The US has a society, culture and economy that allows for their occurence perhaps "better" than most other places. But this doesn't reflect the likely economic pathway that most of the population experiences in life.

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

#139

Post by prmoustache »

liontwist wrote: post #94

> Americans tend to be enthusiastic about their company mission - in the extreme, believing that they’re saving the world I would explain this as commitment signaling. I don’t know if they really believe it, but they want to show they are part of the team and the talking points. Adults use language in a less literal way than introverted engineers may be comfortable with.

> Americans tend to be enthusiastic about their company mission - in the extreme, believing that they’re saving the world

As a european working in a US company, my experience is a lot of this is just hypocritical corporate bullshit.

The difference can be incredible between the public communication which usually sounds like a huge parody and the opinion people really share behind the curtain in more private meetings.

Also being european you are usually used to be able to swear quite easily at work. What we perceive from the US culture that comes to us through movies/series would make us think it would be the same in the USA. However it is the opposite. People swear a lot less at work in the USA in my experience. At least online.

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

#140

Post by missedthecue »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #138
missedthecue wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80% of US millionaires are first generation

Yet economic mobility, measured in terms of the likelihood that you die in a different income decile than you were born into, is lower in the USA than almost anywhere else in the developed world. How to reconcile? It's fairly easy ... there aren't that many millionaires. The US has a society, culture and economy that allows for their occurence perhaps "better" than most other places. But this doesn't reflect the like…

1 in 12 Americans are millionaires.
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