[HN Gopher] What it's like working for American companies as an ...
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What it's like working for American companies as an Australian
Author : gfysfm
Score : 117 points
Date : 2025-01-11 23:03 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.seangoedecke.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.seangoedecke.com)
| denkmoon wrote:
| [flagged]
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Maybe I'm just a cynical aussie, but how can you possibly be
| enthusiastic for (eg.) putting ads infront of as many eyeballs
| as possible?
|
| You can be enthusiastic about a job done well, even if it's not
| necessarily one you believe worth doing.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| This looks like an assertion with spotty applicability
| Aeolun wrote:
| 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.
| ggm wrote:
| 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 are.
|
| She said dealing with the live shark lost in the mail was
| a highspot (a lot of strange delivery issues in the
| modern shop from home world)
| Aeolun wrote:
| 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.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Trust me, nobody gives a flying shit about their companies
| dogshit useless mission or downright useless and laughable
| company values.
|
| They just pretend to in order to get brownie points with upper
| management. It's just playing the game.
|
| And I'm convinced the ones making the values themselves do so
| to see who will fall in line.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| A lot of people are deeply cynical about the front they have to
| put on at work, and a lot of people are also self-selecting
| into roles and workplaces requiring less of a front.
| fy20 wrote:
| At the end of the day, I don't think many people would be doing
| this if they really had a choice (e.g. a few million in the
| bank, house paid off, etc), but it is what it is. You still
| need to play the game of life and make the most out of it.
|
| 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.
| goalieca wrote:
| The missing word is competitive. People want to win. So much of
| the rest of the world just wants to survive till the next day.
| madmask wrote:
| My take is that many games are not worth even playing, let
| alone winning
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I think in the tech sector, as an engineer (what I am) I do not
| feel tied to my company for healthcare. I can snap my fingers
| and have another job with full coverage in a month, earlier if
| I'm willing to take a mid tier job rather than top tier. I've
| never thought about being without healthcare.
|
| 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.
| imoreno wrote:
| >your access to healthcare is directly tied to your enthusiasm
| for the company mission
|
| No, it's not. First, they're legally required to provide it so
| long as you work there, whether you're enthusiastic or not.
| Even if you got fired for not being enthusiastic enough, by law
| you can stay on the same health insurance plan for 18 months.
| If you still haven't found a job after 18-36 months, or just
| don't like the company's plan, you can get your own individual
| plan, or look for a plan for low-income people like medicaid.
|
| The US healthcare system has its problems for sure, but you
| seem confused about what they are.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You are technically correct--the best kind of correct!
| However, if you step back and look at the big picture, the
| US's tethering of health care to employment is probably a big
| driver of lots of critical decisions around employment. It's
| definitely one of the big reasons guys like me with a family
| will never voluntarily quit my job and go try a startup. Or
| just semi-retire when I turn 55 (unless I find health care).
| And COBRA tends to be massively expensive, so while your
| health care is technically available, it's not even remotely
| the same as being employed.
| ghaff wrote:
| >And COBRA tends to be massively expensive
|
| It's pretty similar to a comparable marketplace plan and
| even to Medicare for the first couple of years (which is
| tied to what your recent W-2 income is/was). The issue is
| that your employer is presumably chipping in a lot of your
| current insurance costs as part of your benefits. But, yes,
| if you're paying for insurance on your own, it's expensive
| because you're covering the whole thing.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > 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
| company mission is not a typical requirement for employment.
| Furthermore, despite the pervasive online meme to the contrary,
| the US does have a substantial social safety net -- we devote
| more of our GDP to public social spending1 than Canada or
| Australia. It's completely fair to say that the outcomes can
| vary, but it's not fair to say that Americans are by and large
| left rudderless without help from the state if they lose their
| job.
|
| 1 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-
| long...
| thealig wrote:
| 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.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| 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.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I joke with my friends that one day I am going to get a job
| with Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. and be uncomfortably enthusiastic
| about the mission. Some sort of workplace live art project.
|
| However, I have luckily only worked at companies in my career
| that I could really get behind the mission and have in my view
| a reasonably positive work output. Letting people save money
| for retirement, or start a business is pretty good. I don't
| know how my view would change if I worked for something more
| morally gray.
| crooked-v wrote:
| In my experience (outside of bigtech but in the B-tier of VC-
| funded startups), "change the world" hyperbole is rare, but
| most founders and founding devs are pretty confident they can
| improve some specific topic for some specific niche of people.
| And it's sometimes even true for the ones that provide real
| services.
| etempleton wrote:
| I can assure you, your US colleagues are as cynical as you are,
| but in America you fake a positive attitude because what the
| hell else are you supposed to do but make the best of it?
|
| Generally, the West Coast of the US is the most fake positive
| and the East Coast is the most blunt and outwardly cynical.
| Middle America tends to be friendly yet direct.
| Havoc wrote:
| Downside is they also seem more retrenchment happy.
| jongjong wrote:
| 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 signal of capability.
|
| Many of them have lived in a very fortunate environment where the
| environment rarely worked against them so they don't understand
| the feeling of being thrown successive curveballs, one after
| another while barely trying to stay afloat.
|
| Their idea of adversity is of a hurdle that, if you can clear it,
| you end up further ahead, closer to your goal. They don't see it
| that the hurdles many people face are set up such that if you
| clear it, you are still behind... The prize for clearing nearly
| impossible hurdles is just survival.
|
| There are things I did in my career where all the pieces in my
| plan fell together, amazingly, after 2 years of work and careful
| strategy, with full support of team members, but it all fell
| apart at the end because someone with power behaved in a way
| which was completely counter-intuitive and not aligned with their
| stated goals.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| 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 completely
| fine.
|
| Next thing you know I'm not a team player by HR, and I need to
| be more positive, etc.
|
| Left that job shortly after. I hate this bs culture shit and
| refuse to play it anymore. Luckily where I'm at now doesn't
| care.
| jongjong wrote:
| I can relate. I chose my current job with a pay cut because I
| needed something remote WFH and low-stress to allow me to
| process WTF happened to my career.
|
| 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.
| kurthr wrote:
| I think the parent's experience has as much to do with being
| remote and at a satellite office as anything else. You're not
| going to hear a lot of bitch/moan on conference calls or even
| on Slack (which everyone knows in monitored).
|
| Granted I work in Silivalley, but I'd say that above a certain
| level/age, if you don't show a certain base of cynicism in
| private you're not taken seriously. I mean, if you've seen the
| dotcom bust, and the 2008 collapse, you're looking at current
| conditions and asking whether it's worth it right now. The
| tension on the bubble appears to have exceeded safe parameters.
| FabHK wrote:
| > The tension on the bubble appears to have exceeded safe
| parameters.
|
| Mit dem Angriff _AI_ wird das alles in Ordnung kommen.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| KI?
| zvorygin wrote:
| What does "whether it's worth it right now" mean? As in,
| whether companies are really worth as much as they're valued?
| kurthr wrote:
| If you're getting paid (or have historically been like at
| FAANG) a significant amount in stock, you've been willing
| to put up with 50+ hour work weeks and crazy management
| schedules. If there are layoffs, management reorgs, and
| very high PE ratios for slow growing companies, maybe it's
| a good time to take a break.
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| 100000%.
|
| I envy those who seem to keep the facade up after their own
| career hardships.
| roenxi wrote:
| > 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 from
| years ago that we make it hard to use equity as a significant
| part of employee compensation. Overall Australia lacks the free-
| wheeling spirit of letting people do things that works so well in
| tech so I assume there are a lot of other small barriers I don't
| know about (eg, I'd bet companies like Uber would have been
| killed in the crib if it started in Australia). We also have a
| subtly anti-cheap-energy policy that must make life hard for data
| centres.
|
| We've produced some big tech success stories like Atlassian but
| when you combine dubious regulation with the larger US capital
| markets there isn't really much to recommend about Australia. I
| wouldn't suggest putting money into the Australian tech scene and
| the market has probably sniffed that out.
| danielhanchen wrote:
| Hi to all fellow Australian mates!
| kazinator wrote:
| > _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.
| defrost wrote:
| You can also just refer to AC/DC as the second greatest band in
| history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wJzzspiwK0
| pech0rin wrote:
| Also the Americans don't work barefoot
| FabHK wrote:
| The side effects of going for a swim in the ocean every
| morning, mate.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| 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, they eventually figured it out and have become quite
| successful.
|
| I made some great friends at that company and picked up some
| Aussie slang that I still use today.
| WatchDog wrote:
| What sector was the company in? I'm an Australian that has
| worked a lot with US companies.
|
| The most boastful Australian companies I have worked with have
| also been the least effective.
|
| Consultancies tend to be very boastful, but they have to be
| constantly selling themselves.
|
| The other boastful culture I worked in was a big bank.
|
| They had some of the worst over-complicated software, and a
| horrible culture, it seemed like the only way to rise in the
| company was salesmanship.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It was Computershare. Now dominant in their industry. But
| when I worked for them they had just entered the US market.
|
| I don't know if that's an argument for or against the culture
| then or if it has any relation to their culture now.
|
| And frankly I doubt that this national attribution of
| corporate culture is likely real. I've only worked for the
| one Australian company, I've worked for many American ones
| and the culture around self promotion has been widely
| different across them.
| nunez wrote:
| Hey! So did I! Macquarie Capital was my first employer out of
| college. Loved working for Aussies. Hilarious bunch.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Wow you mean it's not accurate to generalise to an entire
| culture from a few personal experiences? Color me shocked
| bigtones wrote:
| I worked for a California based American tech company while
| living in Perth, Australia for the last two years. All of what
| the OP says rings true, but I can tell that he is living on the
| East Coast of Australia because living in Perth we have literally
| no common business hours with the US West Coast which is brutal.
| I had to start work at midnight and work through the night for
| Zoom meetings and customer interactions and work on Saturday
| morning.
|
| They job pays well and the people are lovely, and Australian
| culture has become a LOT more like the US over the past decade.
| Now we even have Black Friday sales but no conception that was
| invented because of the US Thanksgiving holiday.
| bigthymer wrote:
| > and Australian culture has become a LOT more like the US over
| the past decade
|
| How? What little changes have you noticed?
| YeOldSalt wrote:
| Canadian here- worked for Salesforce in Sydney for 4 years and
| can say working for a big US tech company in Australia definitely
| has it's pros and cons. APAC business units are an after thought
| for companies with U.S HQs which can be good because as long as
| targets are getting hit no one really pays close attention to
| anything else going on. Biggest downside imo is career
| mobility/progression.
| msy wrote:
| 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 windows
| meaning meetings will swing about by 1-2 hours multiple times as
| the seasons change depending on whose calendar created them, it's
| manageable but inevitably there's misses and confusion or
| someone's 8am suddenly becomes a 6am without rescheduling.
|
| The bigger issue however is if you're the AU leg of a global firm
| with a US plurality: If there are teams in the UK or EU for
| example there's simply no way of operating with overlap that
| doesn't involve someone regularly having meetings in the deeply
| inhospitable early hours of the morning.
| btheunissen wrote:
| 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 shift more
| tolerable is that I won't start the following work week until
| Monday night/Tuesday morning, so my weekend nights are Saturday
| and Sunday, so losing out on Friday night isn't too bad.
| Definitely not a schedule for the faint of heart though.
| intelVISA wrote:
| [flagged]
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| We had occasional interlock meetings, briefings, and
| webinars but it pretty much meant that from the east coast
| you were doing them at 10 or 11pm. I'm sure senior execs
| did more frequently. We didn't really have people on the
| west coast, especially latterly when I was there.
|
| Up to 5 or 6 hours is a reasonable range for routine
| interactions.
| aragilar wrote:
| 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).
| Izkata wrote:
| 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.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I did US East Coast / Shanghai for one project. We got
| really good at asynchronous messaging, and that went a long
| way.
|
| Still didn't fix the 1-workday latency for discussions,
| though.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of companies have definitely gotten better at
| asynchronous communications over the past few years. Not
| perfect for everything but if you can keep the weird hour
| calls to a dull roar it's probably more manageable than
| even 10 years ago.
| eitally wrote:
| 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.
| Taniwha wrote:
| 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
| ido wrote:
| 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).
| Taniwha wrote:
| 9am in Pacific time is probably more like your 3-4am
| (depends on where in Aus you live) - certainly you could
| create 'core hours' 1-5pm Pacific time which would at worse
| be your morning (early morning in your winter)
| magicalhippo wrote:
| 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...
| eitally wrote:
| 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.
| thayne wrote:
| > 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.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| It's definitely a generalisation, but in my experience - and
| others who I've spoken to - this is broadly correct.
| hetman wrote:
| 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
| demonstrates any significant level of achievement, with a high
| degree of suspicion. Australians make a national sport of
| cutting down people who excel in any way. Sure, there are sub-
| cultures there which can vary considerably from this general
| trend, but even they feel the influence of this prevailing
| attitude. The end outcome is that Australians tend to go to
| considerable effort to hide the things that may single them out
| as excelling among their peers, and emphasise those things
| which make them similar. (A few months ago the CEO of the most
| powerful retail company in Australia gave an interview
| attempting to reduce public ire at their price gouging tactics,
| dressed in the uniform of a shelf stacker from their
| supermarket chain. I'm not saying this could not have happened
| in America, but there it would have probably been seen as a
| stunt or a statement... in Australia dressing any other way
| would have raised eyebrows, and in fact most people initially
| failed to even notice it for the PR manipulation that it was.)
|
| Geographic proximity will always play a role in bringing
| cultural norms together, and while the US is a big place, the
| US population throughout the 20th century had incredible
| mobility, going where the jobs were, which helped to tighten up
| that bell curve.
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| 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.
| defrost wrote:
| 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.
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| 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.
| dsr_ wrote:
| 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.
| missedthecue wrote:
| 80% of US millionaires are first generation
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| 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.
| missedthecue wrote:
| 1 in 12 Americans are millionaires.
| intelVISA wrote:
| Great ideas are worth approx $0
| robbiep wrote:
| 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
| WatchDog wrote:
| Matches my experience working with SF based companies.
| thayne wrote:
| 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.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| As an American employer I am surprised by some of the assumptions
| about how Americans view Australian culture.
|
| 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.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| [flagged]
| rex_gallorum2 wrote:
| Best comment of them all.
| RustyRussell wrote:
| 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 need to set your
| expectations accordingly!
| esperent wrote:
| > 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 it was years ago).
| Ireland scored amongst the highest that said the boss and other
| staff are equals. I imagine Australia would too, while the US
| would score lower on that scale (as did some other EU
| countries).
|
| I now live in Vietnam, and somehow I've ended up being the
| boss, with a team of around 20 Vietnamese people. While they
| are diligent and skilled workers, the level of deference they
| show to me makes me deeply uncomfortable and I have to keep
| reminding them to talk to me like a human being - call me by my
| name instead of "sir", for example. But it's a losing battle.
| sopooneo wrote:
| 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.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Employment security has a lot to do with it. Obviously you
| can't completely ignore leaders, and if you refuse reasonable
| instructions you can be fired. But you have a lot more freedom
| to rock the boat and share your opinion.
|
| You can not be fired just because you hurt a managers feelings
| by disagreeing with them.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| And you don't lose all (long term) healthcare coverage if
| you're fired in Aus.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I'd say thats due to:
|
| (a) Australian culture being quite egalitarian, ie people there
| see other people just as people rather how much money or power
| they have, etc and
|
| (b) American management being more of the power tripping
| variety, so they're more likely to wield their power in a
| threatening and retaliatory fashion, and so underlings tend to
| be more deferential, including the at-will employment, as you
| say.
| liontwist wrote:
| > 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?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| 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"?
| liontwist wrote:
| Citing an 19th century political movement is not an
| explanation for why Americans would be "power tripping".
|
| What practice or ethos has descended from that time which
| is currently reinforced?
| ajb wrote:
| When the UK startup I worked for was bought by a US company,
| that meant the support functions were consolidated and the IT
| guys had to join the US centralised IT dept. They visited the
| US, and the culture shock started to bite when the head of IT
| got a standing ovation just for walking into the room. (And
| this was an engineering company, so the head of IT wasn't the
| CTO).
| martinpw wrote:
| > 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.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Apparently NPS scoring done on big international corporations
| does take this into account.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Self-reviews are absolutely the stupidest thing. It's a way for
| the manager to foist off the work of writing the review onto
| the person being reviewed, and a way to guarantee that the
| reviews are glowing piles of bullshit because of course the
| sensible thing to do if you are writing your own review is to
| oversell your achievements and not discuss any deficiencies.
|
| _You 're_ the manager -- it's _your job_ to evaluate and
| review the performance of your reports. Not theirs.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| self-reviw can be good if it is about a honest conversation
| "what do you think how well you are doing" and then get an
| honest outside view for comparison. Often one feels and about
| something which somebody else didn't notice and lack
| somewhere else.
|
| However most reviews I have seen are about paying the system,
| not honest evaluation of problems and praise of what's good.
| liontwist wrote:
| > 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.
| antonvs wrote:
| > Americans tend to be enthusiastic about their company mission
| - in the extreme, believing that they're saving the world
|
| This is more of a Silicon Valley thing, isn't it? I've worked
| for or interacted with plenty of non-tech large enterprises
| where that's certainly not true.
| snackbroken wrote:
| It's certainly more of a thing in SV, but it's not just a SV
| thing. The US in general is about as far removed from the
| rest of the world on this axis as SV is from the rest of the
| US. Experiences vary, of course.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| 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 in those
| respective interviews.
|
| Utterly insane from an Australian point of view - you'd get
| pass and a mark for directness for saying "i don't bloody well
| know".
|
| I have heard of mission statements being asked by international
| companies operating in Australia but again you'd pass if the
| interviewer themselves was Australian since it's 100% seen as
| bullshit by every level of Australians from management to
| employees on the ground.
|
| eg. Wtf is a mission statement and why am i being asked thread
| on the Australia subreddit:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1f7srnw/what_is...
| antonvs wrote:
| Meta, Google, and Amazon are outliers, though. Part of their
| schtick originally was that they're trying to build a cult,
| although my sense is that may have relaxed a bit as they've
| grown. IBM used to do a similar thing back in the day.
|
| I've worked in tech in the US as an immigrant for over 40
| years, and never been quizzed on a mission statement.
| liontwist wrote:
| 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 it's performative, but why wouldn't you take
| 10 minutes to indicate you are doing that kind of serious
| thinking?
|
| It's like asking a boss for guidance without doing groundwork
| to make a recommendation.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| 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 virtue signalling.
| liontwist wrote:
| 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.
| tolciho wrote:
| 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 mission statement
| differ from a loyalty dance for chairman Mao? I get that
| many have an economic (or life) imperative to go along with
| what the clownsuite orders, but these same people make fun
| of island savages in the Pacific for "cargo culting".
| liontwist wrote:
| I don't see how this comment relates. I'm telling you how
| to get hired and succeed at a corporation.
| grey-area wrote:
| '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 values they
| actually hold (as opposed to profess to hold). They do not
| usually describe the work to be done.
| liontwist wrote:
| > 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.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| In Australia, nobody sees themself as servant, and you
| will be torn down if you see yourself as a master.
|
| Managers are just people like everybody else and have a
| job with different tasks.
| watwut wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Must be an SV thing? I've never been asked to recite a
| mission statement for a company where I was interviewing (or
| even working at, for that matter). Most assume I don't know
| much about the company and a good part of the introductory
| chit-chat in an interview is them telling me about their
| history and what it is that they do.
| bink wrote:
| I live in the bay area and have worked for several of the
| big tech companies and startups. The only time I can
| remember anyone discussing mission statements was when I
| interviewed at AirBnB. They had a full interview (30 mins
| IIRC) just about the company mission. The explained that it
| was very important to the CEO. I apparently failed that
| interview and they made me do another with a different
| person about the same topic. It was very awkward.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| One of the US company's I work for asks the questions about
| 'our' mission statement. It's used as a way to see if someone
| has checked out the website, page 1, bold, and in capitals.
| adrianh wrote:
| I'd call this a California thing -- or, more broadly, a
| behavior by people who want to align themselves culturally with
| Silicon Valley.
|
| Work with some Chicagoans (or Midwesterners in general) and
| you'll get a lot less BS.
|
| Obviously this is painting with broad strokes, as different
| types of people live everywhere.
| liontwist wrote:
| This does not align with my experience. Midwest middle aged
| folks at boring corporations are pros.
| pythonguython wrote:
| 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.
| jghn wrote:
| As a Gen Xer, I figured this was a millennial thing. Given
| the age ranges you cite that may still be the case. I don't
| work with enough Gen Zers to paint them with a broad brush.
|
| But most of the people I've worked with who wanted feel "part
| of something" had been 10+ years younger than me.
| liontwist wrote:
| I think it's a "has work experience" thing.
| datavirtue wrote:
| There is no quicker way to get yourself put on the back
| burner than failing to pick up the pom poms. If you are
| valued by management you will get a few warnings but other
| than that you go one a silent list for the next restructuring
| or making an example of.
| leptons wrote:
| >the only people at my company
|
| So your sample size is 1 company? That's very anecdotal. And
| you're younger than 30, so you probably haven't worked at
| many companies. There are plenty of people in plenty of other
| companies that you've never met.
| conradfr wrote:
| Maybe that's just because the stakes of losing your job are
| higher once you move up the ladder, have kids etc.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > 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.
| brabel wrote:
| I am Brazilian-Australian, worked for a few years in Australia
| and then moved to Sweden and worked for an American company here.
|
| The company was Swedish, but was eventually acquired by an
| American corporation.
|
| One of the projects we were working on started getting delayed
| due to endless discussions about which tech to use and how to
| architect things (the companies used completely different stacks)
| so we could integrate everything. One day, we had a video call
| with one big Manager from Florida. The guy just started shouting
| like a maniac and treated everyone, including us and his American
| team, like crap.
|
| That was so incredibly surreal to everyone on our side, as even
| the tiniest raising of your voice in our office would've been
| extremely unusual, and Swedes are one of the most conflict-
| avoiding people you can find anywhere. After the call was over,
| everyone was all thinking like "what the fuck just happened" but
| no one said much at all... we just kind of pretended that did not
| happen and slowly went back to playing some ping pong and calmly
| sitting at our desks and doing some work with headphones on.
|
| After a few months, only I was left on the team as everyone just
| found elsewhere to work.... I followed a couple of months after.
| tpaschalis wrote:
| Regarding the culture bit: I feel that Erin Meyer's "The Culture
| Map" [1] should be high on any reading list around how to work in
| a remote environment, especially as a manager. Of course, every
| individual is different and not everything needs to be taken at
| face value, but it provides a nice framework to think about
| how/why other teammates may approach situations in a specific
| way.
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22085568-the-culture-map
| hx8 wrote:
| > I've also grown to love the rhythm of busy mornings and deep-
| work afternoons.
|
| I live on the west coast, and 95% of the people I work with are
| either east coast or in central timezone. I find that I too enjoy
| the rhythm of communication during the mornings and deep-work in
| the afternoons, although it's a lot less extreme than the
| author's situation.
| sopooneo wrote:
| As an American from a region with an atypically dry and reserved
| culture, the Australia attitude sounds nice.
| christopher8827 wrote:
| 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.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| As an American who worked for an Australian company, the time
| change was actually great. I had my whole morning to do as I
| pleased, since Australia is several hours behind the USA...
| although it's tomorrow.
|
| I never thought of Australians under- or over-touting their
| professional achievements. I did find my coworkers very
| respectful and supportive.
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