Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

seangoedecke.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 189 posts

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

#71

Post by martinpw »

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

Although this is obviously a generalization, it is broadly accurate in my experience. And it can be a real problem, for example at performance review time when employees are expected to write self reviews, which obviously involve putting their work in the best possible light. Also just general regular status reports that are widely distributed and so highly visible.

As background, I am a US based manager, originally from the UK, with US, Europe and Australia based reports. I regularly get told by the Australians, and most but not all Europeans, that they really struggle with the expectation that they need to present their achievements for performance review or general status updates in ways that feel uncomfortably boastful to them. Most US reports on the other hand (but definitely not all) have less problem with this.

This means it is often down to the manager to make sure their employees are rated fairly by upper management. Since I struggle with the self-promotion myself (being from the UK!) I can empathise and try to work with reports to apply the appropriate correction factors, but it is definitely a real issue.

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

#72

Post by defrost »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #52
hetman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think we (Australians) have a real lack of effort=success stories to draw from; if someone has wealth it was probably inherited. In the US if you have wealth it's plausible that you had a great idea that got acquired, or a great skill.

There are many examples of Australians that have started middle class or even poorer and become wealthy (multi millionaires, a few billionaires) through their own business efforts.

What's lacking is a general habit of boasting about this, being wealthy, letting others in the country (ie. yourself) know about it.

You can find first generation pretty wealthy Australians in trucking, factory ownership, real estate, mining, warehouse volume sales, etc. Of those the ones most likely to be flash about their cash would be the real estate crowd, success in house sales is hard to come by without prominent self promotion.

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

#73

Post by defrost »

kazinator wrote: post #12

> 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.

You can also just refer to AC/DC as the second greatest band in history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wJzzspiwK0

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

#74

Post by Izkata »

aragilar wrote: post #54
bradleyjg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found being in the US east coast in teams spread across Europe and the US to have the advantage of being able to touch base with anyone fairly easily but the disadvantage of never getting that natural quiet period. I don’t see how us east cost apac is really feasible on any kind of regular basis.

I think daily/weekly you'd shift work hours (that what I do when I have a meeting like that). Global meetings are always a pain, though I'd say the worst meetings are when US-based folks plan a meeting based on their local timezone, as opposed to UTC, because it always ends up at 3am in Australia (so I bow out of those).

We have US/UK/Shanghai teams that for years we tried to combine into one big distributed team, which never worked well. Usually big meetings happened twice, once for US/UK and once for UK/Shanghai, and on the rare occasions they wanted one big meeting it was centered on UK time, so US people had to get up really early and Shanghai people were on really late.

Then there was one time when both of us in the US happened to have taken the next day off, and we're both naturally night owls, so I suggested just for that one time moving the meeting 6-7 hours earlier on a different day - we'd both still be awake, it would be just before the start of the UK workday, and just before 5pm for Shanghai, so for once they didn't have to get online late.

We didn't do it because the UK group didn't want to get up an hour earlier.

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

#75

Post by typewithrhythm »

defrost wrote: post #72
typewithrhythm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we (Australians) have a real lack of effort=success stories to draw from; if someone has wealth it was probably inherited. In the US if you have wealth it's plausible that you had a great idea that got acquired, or a great skill.

There are many examples of Australians that have started middle class or even poorer and become wealthy (multi millionaires, a few billionaires) through their own business efforts. What's lacking is a general habit of boasting about this, being wealthy, letting others in the country (ie. yourself) know about it. You can find first generation pretty wealthy Australians in trucking, factory ownership, real estate, mini…

Sure, I don't disagree that they exist as people, but as prominent stories in the culture they generally don't; outside of Lindsey fox I can't think of any...

Real estate wealth is a bit prominent, bit doesn't really have the same tone as designing or building something, more a reflection of our current dirt obsession.

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

#76

Post by nunez »

kasey_junk wrote: post #17

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…

Hey! So did I! Macquarie Capital was my first employer out of college. Loved working for Aussies. Hilarious bunch.

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

#77

Post by thayne »

WatchDog wrote: post #62
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.

Matches my experience working with SF based companies.

But that's kind of my point. That might be the culture in SF, but that doesn't mean it is the culture everywhere in America. SF has its own distinct culture. And that is very different from the culture in, say, West Virginia.

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

#78

Post by dsr_ »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #52
hetman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think we (Australians) have a real lack of effort=success stories to draw from; if someone has wealth it was probably inherited. In the US if you have wealth it's plausible that you had a great idea that got acquired, or a great skill.

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.

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

#79

Post by thealig »

nozzlegear wrote: post #46
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…

> When your access to healthcare is directly tied to your enthusiasm for the company mission, it seems to me that you _must_ display that enthusiasm even if it's a facade. I get what you're implying, but I want to point out that healthcare is not "directly tied to your enthusiasm." I'm sure somebody can post their anecdote about being fired for not having enough pep in their step at work, but enthusiasm for the compa…

think you're grossly misunderstanding what social safety net means - public spending is not the same thing as a safety net. the public healthcare system that countries like Gemrnay have is an example of a social safety net.

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

#80

Post by intelVISA »

btheunissen wrote: post #24
msy wrote: post #20

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…

I currently work for a YC company based in New York, with myself in Australia after moving back to be closer to family and have switched my work schedule to be from Tuesday to Saturday to align with EST as you mentioned. Not exactly the most pleasant working hours but my coworkers have been pretty accommodating to make the essential meetings as early as possible. One slight benefit that makes the Friday to Saturday s…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN