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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

#81

Post by intelVISA »

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.

Great ideas are worth approx $0

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

#82

Post by EliRivers »

mmmBacon wrote: post #39
sahila wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Nah. Just don’t want to work with negative Nancy. You bring everyone down.

Are you aware that your attitude also affects everyone in a negative way (and you just don't care?), or are you oblivious to the damage you do to people?

Or maybe for you it's all about the output and how good your numbers look, and damaging people is just a price to pay?

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

#83

Post by magicalhippo »

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…

Reminds me of the Carmageddon postmortem. They had administration and HR in London, and all the devs in Sydney.

In the postmortem they noted that this worked very well because they would all be working at the same time...

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

#84

Post by seb1204 »

martinpw wrote: post #71

> 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…

Apparently NPS scoring done on big international corporations does take this into account.

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

#85

Post by Aeolun »

ggm wrote: post #44
Aeolun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please believe me when I tell you that I am not enthusiastic about insurance and/or callcenter operations. What I’m enthusiastic about is serving those applications to country sized populations. I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one.

I am enthusiastic about using quality call centres and I value the service. I give the respondent respect. A niece who worked in one told me some firms give staff a daily discretionary spend to make small problems go away and I believe it's worth it, and it's worth being respectful to the person trying to help you, if they have this ability then it reflects their autonomy, your value as a customer and how nice you ar…

I’m not saying we don’t need them. Obviously they provide a valuable service and I wish the best for our agents and customers.

But the problem is about as boring as they come. There’s nothing exciting about making a callcenter operate well, even though it’s often done wrong. Probably why we can (apparently) eat the market.

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

#86

Post by ido »

Taniwha wrote: post #41
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 worked in NZ for SV companies for the past 20 years (until I retired) - I essentially worked US time but NZ days - so I got up early (5am winter, 7am summer and worked US core hours 10am-6pm) but didn't work US Fridays and got a lot done on my Monday. After 5 years I switched jobs and they agreed that I'd never have to start work at 5am (so 11am-7pm CA time) - that worked really well

I worked for an Australian company from Germany and did similarly (I worked German work days but would start early ~5:30-6am to have some overlap with the Australians - they never expected me to work "core hours", just to have some overlap).

It wasn't too bad! Much easier than working with west coast US (where their 9am is my 6pm - I don't want to work late but I don't mind working early).

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

#87

Post by nozzlegear »

thealig wrote: post #79
nozzlegear wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm not misunderstanding it. In fact, I think it's a misunderstanding of the current zeitgeist that "public safety net" must necessarily include a public healthcare system. If that were true, then a country like Switzerland wouldn't qualify as having a public safety net.

In the US, our public safety net consists of Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment benefits and SNAP, among other things. Like I said in my previous comment, the outcomes/efficacy of our safety net versus Germany's safety net are totally different, and it's fair to criticize that. But the spending reflects our country's intent to provide a safety net, even if it's far from perfect.

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

#88

Post by TheCapeGreek »

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…

100000%.

I envy those who seem to keep the facade up after their own career hardships.

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

#89

Post by eitally »

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…

The Northern/Southern Hemisphere DST issue affects all kinds of places. I had the same issue between the US & Brazil, for example, where east coast US time difference between Sao Paulo is either 2hr (yay) or 4hr (boo), or three hours during the "swing shifts" between the dates each country observes the DST change.

Similarly, the "three continent" meeting scheduling problem exists with many combos, too, especially if you have teams in both Western Europe / Middle East / Africa and anywhere in ASEAN.

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

#90

Post by eitally »

bradleyjg wrote: post #42
ghaff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, timezones (and different days) are an issue for regular meetings. At my last job, US east coast to Europe worked pretty well. We'd be reasonable morning time on the east coast and Europe would be reasonable mid to late afternoon time. But the (for me occasional) call to Singapore was always a pain for someone.

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.

It depends if you're a morning person or not. I used to manage teams in India & China from the east coast and it was usually a-ok having 2-3 hours of overlap each morning. It's FAR harder from the west coast and there's really no way around having evening (US) meetings since the alternative is asking the remote team to be in the office quite late.

That said, this is also why many Asian teams get accustomed to working US hours -- essentially "2nd shift" -- to accommodate west coast overlap.

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