As a New Zealander who's had skin cancer, and lives under constant high UV rates because of the lack of an ozone above my country (and Australia, South America, South Africa), I'd really like it if Europeans continued to reduce/stop ozone harming emissions.
This was one of the most exhausting aspects of working for a US company, especially as an H1B. Simply: just don't say anything, it wasn't worth it.
I'm from cultures where we bluntly call a spade a spade and pride ourselves on disdain for hierarchy. There's far less fear in raising concerns generally to anyone, but it's quite possibly because of the far better employment laws.
It's not just due to an employee being H1B. It's that 80% of your peers are Chinese and Indian H1Bs who bring that culture of deference to authority into the US.
I don't even feel like I'm working in the US when I'm working for any tech company these days. If I'm at ads for FB, I may as well be in Beijing. Some others, I may as well be in Mumbai.
It would be nice to work with Americans/westerners for once and actually be able to speak up about something without getting fired.
I don't agree with OP. I'm American and have mostly worked for American companies and have rarely had issues with giving honest, often difficult, feedback to superiors.
But
> 80% of your peers are Chinese and Indian H1Bs who bring that culture of deference to authority into the US.
is sadly spot on. Even when the org is very receptive to feedback, one manager in the chain who possesses a cultural belief in absolute authority is enough to break the feedback chain and lead to an organizational abscess of festering dysfunction.
It becomes even worse when your org's management has been taken over by a single cultural group and there is no one to turn to and your only option is to wait for the org to implode and be restructured from above.
This happens with any sort of foreign investments into any other country that has different sets of values. Even now the locals in my country are complaining about neo-colonialism and india/china-only perspectives in the companies they work for. Protectionist reactions are real and shape politics.
In my experience, Americans are much more likely to see criticism as a threat or an insult than in most European business cultures, where blunt feedback is common. I’ve seen many teams in different companies led by Americans where simply pointing out that a plan will fail in a public forum is tantamount to spitting in their face. It’s absurd, and it destroys teams.
> I’ve seen many teams in different companies led by Americans where simply pointing out that a plan will fail in a public forum is tantamount to spitting in their face.
I’ve been put into the “practitioner of the dark arts” bucket twice when I predicted with detail and accuracy why certain large projects would fail.
The folks in charge were offended when I presented my analysis, and they were just afraid of me after my predictions came true.
When I had reasonable certainty of my next gig being lined up, I even put the question to leaders. "If I tell you why this project is destined to failure now in Q1 vs being quiet and playing along til end of year, will I be rewarded or punished any differently then?".
The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well.
> The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well.
If one has not read The Gervais Principle, it’s highly recommended.
The gap is much bigger between Americans and Chinese/Indian than it is between American and European.
I’m not just talking about public forums. Saying anything to your superior (perceived superior or otherwise) would result in disciplinary action nearly 100% of the time. It is not even about blunt vs tactful feedback. It’s about any feedback. You do exactly what you’re told and you shut the fuck up.
I found that out the hard way first time I worked in a company with European managers and majority Indian ICs. Acting European got me PIPed and then fired so damned fast for failure to shut up and do the needful.
I don’t think H1Bism is even primarily about depressing IC wages in the west, it’s about middle managers being so burdened with pointless make-work from above that they just don’t have time to lead. They need people who don’t need to be led even if it costs in terms of quality and efficiency.
Interesting. I used to work mainly with european developers (dutch, french, germans, russians, spaniards, polish, etc.) and I always could speak my mind, and others would do so. No BS, no avoiding direct confrontation. But more recently I have been working with ex-faang american developers and I don’t like it. It’s not that they are like indians and the like, but definitely not as direct and straightforward as europeans.
I feel like Americans are all over the place. The top echelons of business in the US are very blunt and direct. The lower levels tend to be very indirect with lots of toxic positivity. I think this works out for capitalism and exactly fits the Gervais Principle.
Brits are even worse than Americans at all levels (hence, the largely incompetent government and the fact most businesses are poorly run - it's literally The Thick of It at all levels).
Indian/Asians are the absolute worst in terms of directness, these are all very strict hierarchies of business that only succeed if the top person is a genius, since they will never be challenged by anyone.
Europeans definitely are most direct of all, so they don't put up with wage slavery, so business leaders can't maximize their extraction of value from labour, but they tend to have better quality of life all around :).
As a Brit, I agree with your comments. I've had to overcome a lot of my own culture to be an effective leader, and even then I don't always do a good job.
In my ~30 year career in the US, as a local, I have seen constant change. The FAANGs are even an amplified version of this. So when someone draws a comparison I always wonder if they are comparing contemporaries or rather an older experience versus a newer one, which is confounded by these temporal shifts.
I think there are a few significant (first-order) factors in the evolving US tech culture.
One is the often discussed age bias and growth rate, where these organizations are constantly diluting with incoming college grads and leaking their institutional knowledge and culture through low retention rates. It's not just H1B workers but all these new local hires who are "colonizing" the old tech world.
The second is the way FAANGs have focused on general consumer markets, advertising, and pop culture. To my eye, other markets used to be more influential. These other tech problems and investments remain, but the new media gold rush has seized the attention for many years. Consumer tech has been merging with media in general, and I think the culture inherently shifts in the same way.
The third factor is a bit recursive. The adoption of social media in the general population affects the way that culture evolves. This disproportionately influences young people, and a subset become the next wave of employees mentioned in the first point. But this is also why I wonder if these changes are more global, as my impression is that social media has accelerated the way regional cultural differences are eroding with more frequent and constant cross contact.
I've had a pretty similar experience in big tech. Some cultures do really seem to struggle with feedback (both giving and receiving). It can be a very painful work environment as a result - given I'm an incredibly direct person.
The best work culture I had was in a dutch firm. People just straight up called bullshit out all the time, and it got fixed fast. So refreshing. I've never been able to find another workplace like that.
Reasonable observations on office behaviour are being processed into glib stereotypes on culture. Employees routinely show discontent in India, (just one instance https://www.reuters.com/world/india/workers-apple-supplier-f...). So much so, that labour disputes are considered a major obstacle to corporate investment. Like Europe, India has labour laws which make people hard to fire.
There are other factors involved - if a H1B employee, whose job security is tied to the employer risks taking a 10x salary cut or more by going back home, then a fear for job security leading to such behaviour is a given.
Inside AWS felt like hundreds (thousands?) of Indians who have terrible jobs but don't do anything about it. Now that I'm out I can't believe what I put up with.
Perhaps you could present yourself as worthy through your work, rather than bemoaning that others as worthy were more conducive to being treasured employees?
It's not just H1-Bs from those cultures, either. I'll give everybody a fair shot but if your cultural mores are extreme deference to authority I'd like to be far away from you when doing anything serious. I'd argue that a certain level of distrust of authority is not only good but inherently American. And no, I'm not saying "Americans take criticism well."
I don't like all the stereotypes people throw around, but among those stereotypes is that California tech bros are pathological delusional wannabe-hippie optimists who blow smoke and sunshine at everyone.
This is why sometimes, "just don’t say anything" becomes the survival tactic - especially when the risk of speaking up feels like it outweighs any potential benefit
As a kid I spent summers working in the schools IT department in order to save up to buy VB6 (with a staff discount). This was not cheap back in the day!
NZ is maybe a poor example, as we do not have capital gains taxes on houses (or most things), and do tax foreign investments (via a ~1.5% annual wealth tax, so house flipping is tax-free money)
This is true, but I wouldn't underestimate the tax advantages property investment has relative to other investments in many countries.
Take Australia for example. People in NZ often say a CGT won't help because AU has one and it doesn't seem to make a difference. What they forget is that there is 50% discount on CGT there, so the relative advantage of property investment remains. Also negative gearing.
In the US I believe there are two obvious advantages given to residential property investment - 30 year fixed mortgages and tax deductions on interest payments.
I think it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to guess that all of those countries I mentioned earlier have different reasons for residential property investment being favoured relative to more productive investments.
I got my first remote gig (firmware work) through a friend's referral, however that was years before COVID-19. These days I'd suggest looking for a remote-first company. Or, maybe apply for remote gigs that say US-only (assuming there's not an obvious or stated reason), then bring up your location when talking to a real human.
FWIW - technically I run a NZ company, so am a contractor and not an employee of the company that my day-to-day manager works for. This arrangement seems to be common among people who work for US companies, or are US citizens, which brings up some questions about the stats in the article...
Boom times for anyone in road building and construction, probably.
It's been described as a billion dollar weather event on par with the Christchurch earthquake 10+ years ago.
Similarly my anecdata is how hard it is to find a car park in the allegedly in decline Wellington CBD and then how difficult it is to find a restaurant that isn't overflowing with happy diners and consequently incapable of accommodating us.
