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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

#161

Post by ehnto »

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.

> Adults use language in a less literal way than introverted engineers may be comfortable with.

How condescending. "Adults" in other regions often do not have the facade of overenthusiasm that America/SV specifically has. It is a cultural quirk, not something specific to if someone's an introverted engineer or not.

I've worked for SV companies as an outsider as well, and it was immediately noticeable. It was like everyone had a gun to their back and were being asked to say "I love the company!". It reminded me of a Japanese company, except without the deeper authenticity granted by older social protocols.

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

#162

Post by pb7 »

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…

The deciles are much further apart and the ceiling is massive. Compare the medians of all the countries (the US is at or near the top) then compare the 90th percentile and the US is heads and shoulders over the next highest.

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

#164

Post by a_bonobo »

roenxi wrote: post #8

> If I lived in San Francisco, I’d have ~100x more available jobs to apply to if I lost my current one. In some sense this also fits under culture. The Australian government has historically been fairly technophobic (they really have a thing against privacy - the ban on effective encryption springs to mind, they've tried to ban Monero too but that doesn't work because crypto is too slippery). I also vaguely recall fr…

IME:

There's also a weirdly un-technical career path at most places. I haven't seen many mid-sized to larger local companies that have technical career pathways. Most people have to switch to managerial pathways once they hit ~mid-career because compensation for technical roles stop growing. That means that there's just not much technical experience that accrues, and most people in leadership positions have either outdated or little technical expertise.

Some outliers exist - Canva? Atlassian? - but the norm seem to be a managerial work structure, not a tech-heavy.

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

#165

Post by RichardCA »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #98
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.

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…

The concept of a mission / vision statement is an artifact of 1980's "Management Consulting" culture in the US, which had ties to the various "Human Potential" groups like est, Landmark Forum, etc.

Other things like 360 degree feedback are also borrowed from that culture.

There was a very old article in Fortune about this, it's preserved but there is no formatting.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240415121234/https://money.cnn...

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

#166

Post by grey-area »

liontwist wrote: post #152
grey-area wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange journey you’ve gone on here in this thread from adults doing serious thinking about the company mission to admitting you see yourself as a sycophantic servant to your master. Other non-feudal relationships are possible based on mutual respect and honesty.

You interact with executives as if they are your coworker? > sycophantic servant The misunderstanding is that you believe a servant is someone held in chains and beaten with a whip. A master is someone with power and authority, and servant is someone who works for them.

No, that’s not the misunderstanding here, and that’s not what sycophantic means.

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

#167

Post by soco »

liontwist wrote: post #110
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company level mission statements tend to be too vague to be relevant or helpful and they really don't actually apply anyway. They may as well all say "we do good things" when the actual underlying goal is "make money". I do believe in the "When in Rome do as the Romans do" mindset though so i'll happily memorize it 2 mins before the interview. It's just that i 100% openly refuse to accept they are anything other than…

All that might be true, and it’s still a bad political move to show up without preparation that indicates you did more than upload a resume. You’re basically saying “i don’t know how to present myself and I’m going to cause problems for your organization”. It’s like “why can’t I show up at 2 PM and work until 11. I get my work done”. You just have no awareness and are a liability for your boss.

This very reason is why US company culture is mocked in all those US shows, yet ironically (and often not ironically) US workers still take offense and defend it. Because if memorizing the company's... uh, what was that text called... thing, is what makes you useful in a company, sorry I cannot continue without laughing so I'll stop here.

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

#168

Post by soco »

watwut wrote: post #132
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…

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.

I can guarantee you nobody knows it around here, managers or employees, and we work for an US company (in Europe though). We also don't ask it in interviews yet we all are successful at what we do. That's one data point.

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

#169

Post by astrange »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #113
liontwist wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> American management being more of the power tripping variety That’s not an explanation. That’s just restating it. Why would Australians be less tempted by power? Could it be that Americans are more exposed to management and hierarchy in their youth?

Power tripping isn't really about being "tempted by power", rather it's when you become self-righteous because you got granted (some) power. If you want some sweeping generalisation for why Americans are more prone to this sin, how about the various old cultural patterns of thought that fit under the header "manifest destiny"?

Australia is a colonial nation that unified its entire continent - that's beating the US, who have two large neighbors and a couple small ones.

(Of course both countries have indigenous nations inside them. They're actually very similar, which I think is the reason Australians tend to be culturally resentful of the US on surveys in a way almost no other country is.)

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

#170

Post by astrange »

christopher8827 wrote: post #134

Good to hear from another Australian. The tech industry is completed dead in Australia atm. I have been job hunting overseas in the EU as a result after the layoffs of 2022 but its damn hard.

We hired some people from CSIRO who did that seL4 thing that was quite impressive. The lack of productization was also impressive, to the point I don't know why they did it in the first place. Maybe I should ask them.
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