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European Company Ignorance

4,572 Views | 43 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by Apache
evestor1
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I work for a European company. I often laugh at the different attitude and demeanor of our people overseas. Few examples:

1. Email Americans at 3am CST and say "I need this by 9am today" for items that take three days to produce. When you say "i need a few days" they respond with "Please complete asap, but i do not need it for 5 days." We do this at least twice per month.

2. Tell Americans that they do not get holidays off and should take PTO. Neglecting that their benefits package is 40 PTO days and USA is 15 PTO + 7 Holiday.

3. All video calls have presentations ... our USA video calls have zero presentations within internal meetings.

4. Ask about getting individual raises and bonuses on company-wide state of union calls. I am talking a few hundred people and "Oliver wants to know when he will be getting an increase in salary." or "When do i get my Christmas Bonus" - only 10% of the company is eligible for incentive pay...and they allow public questioning over it. Happens on all company wide calls...never upsets the managment.



What do your foreign companies and co-workers do that make you confused.
jeremy
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AG
That's awesome to hear. I don't work with anyone from other countries, but I find this stuff fascinating.

The PTO thing would really stick in my craw.
Charlie Murphy
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Mine has been the complete opposite. European companies tend to be a tad more relaxed on vaction given the culture of taking extended vacation.
TommyGun
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AG
I worked for BP right out of college for about six years and obviously had a lot of British coworkers and did some work in London and Scotland. Honestly, they were not a bad group to work with. BP and other European oil majors have been doing a lot of work in the US for so long that the two cultures kind of understand each other and there wasn't much weirdness.

Most of the gripes I heard were on the Brit side from engineers and commercial types who wished they could get American compensation packages. I think a lot of them would have traded a lot of the national holidays and extra PTO in favor of the money US engineers make. They were so loaded down with taxes and the pay discrepancy between a petroleum engineer and a run of the mill back office admin wasn't much for people early in their careers. So they pushed hard for expat assignments abroad that would accelerate their pay.

As far as things that confused me, that's kind of hard to pinpoint. I will say that Brits always love to hear themselves talk and they take pride in having a quick wit and using elaborate speech to describe mundane things. I can remember numerous meetings and conference calls that would get taken off the rails by some British dude who wanted to belabor some inconsequential point like he was making a case to parliament. Americans can often be viewed as less refined but in a business setting they just get it done. Many Brits seem to care more for style over substance and got in their own way too often (although this has seeped into American business culture as of late).
htxag09
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AG
Our company is owned and headquartered in the US but we have an office and I have direct team members in the UK as well as dealing with suppliers in the UK regularly.

My "frustrations" are actually the opposite. To them, there is a hard line between work and home life. They'll go on PTO for 2 weeks and that means they're just off the grid. And sometimes the person in their out of office is off, as is the person in their out of office, etc. Or you'll be close to wrapping up a contract/project and then they just put it on hold for 2 weeks until they're back. Won't pass it off or even just sign a document while they're on holiday.

Same for the hard stop at the end of their workday. Better get all the collaboration you need done in those few hours that overlap.

And I put "frustration" in quotations because I'm not truly frustrated by it, I kind of appreciate and understand it's just their culture and kind of necessary. If they were working when we were working they'd never have time wit their families.
LMCane
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evestor1 said:

I work for a European company. I often laugh at the different attitude and demeanor of our people overseas. Few examples:

1. Email Americans at 3am CST and say "I need this by 9am today" for items that take three days to produce. When you say "i need a few days" they respond with "Please complete asap, but i do not need it for 5 days." We do this at least twice per month.

2. Tell Americans that they do not get holidays off and should take PTO. Neglecting that their benefits package is 40 PTO days and USA is 15 PTO + 7 Holiday.

3. All video calls have presentations ... our USA video calls have zero presentations within internal meetings.

4. Ask about getting individual raises and bonuses on company-wide state of union calls. I am talking a few hundred people and "Oliver wants to know when he will be getting an increase in salary." or "When do i get my Christmas Bonus" - only 10% of the company is eligible for incentive pay...and they allow public questioning over it. Happens on all company wide calls...never upsets the managment.



What do your foreign companies and co-workers do that make you confused.

I could write a Tolstoy book on this subject.

yesterday there is a meeting notice for a Teams Meeting Virtual at 0800 EST which means I have to wake up earlier than usual to get to the office by 0745 battling rush hour traffic in DC.

get to the office in time, check my email. from 0340 EST (1040 in Israel) "based on what Tim just wrote we can cancel this meeting"

happens EVERY SINGLE TIME
third deck
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AG
The Europeans certainly have some style elements that to us appear somewhat goofy and odd. Europe is so different across countries that it is hard to paint it all with a broad brush. That said, here are 3 things that I really admire about colleagues and customers I have worked with in Europe.

1. They all generally speak multiple languages well when I barely have command of one.

2. I found EU colleagues to be way more hospitable than folks in the US.

3. On the whole, they are slim and in shape. It gives me hope that being healthy can be actually achieved as a lifelong goal with a certain discipline.
Stat Monitor Repairman
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Including a photo and age on CVs.
evestor1
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for real? i have never seen that!
dallasiteinsa02
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My wife oversees people worldwide. She had an employee that was transferring from England to Australia. Because of the time change and other company cutbacks, they decided to terminate her. When they gave her notice, she had two weeks to decide if the company was able to tell her fellow employees that she was fired or if she had quit. She stopped doing anything for two weeks and my wife wasn't able to tell a soul that anything was going on. Just shift workflow, but she still participated in every zoom call as if it was business as usual while she was making her decision on the message. It didn't matter which one she picked after two weeks she would get a mandatory 3-month severance package.

She of course picked the quit storyline and took the severance package.
beerag04
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AG
Every summer there is a mad rush of demanding crazy turnaround times so that as much as possible can be done in July and the entire European corporate headquarters can take off the entire month of August.

Although when visiting the European office, I do enjoy the multiple hour long coffee breaks every day.
Stat Monitor Repairman
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Yep, have seen July for Scandinavian countries and the entire month of August as you move south. A lot of things grind to a halt as decision makers out of pocket.
Stat Monitor Repairman
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evestor1 said:

for real? i have never seen that!
Marital status in some places as well.
EclipseAg
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AG
third deck said:


3. On the whole, they are slim and in shape. It gives me hope that being healthy can be actually achieved as a lifelong goal with a certain discipline.
Back in the day, my firm had a client that was based in France. They had a big meeting in Houston that a lot of their folks came over for, and they asked if they could use our conference room for a day.

Not kidding ... the women who showed up all looked like models, even the older ones. Dressed to the nines and very attractive.
YouBet
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AG
htxag09 said:

Our company is owned and headquartered in the US but we have an office and I have direct team members in the UK as well as dealing with suppliers in the UK regularly.

My "frustrations" are actually the opposite. To them, there is a hard line between work and home life. They'll go on PTO for 2 weeks and that means they're just off the grid. And sometimes the person in their out of office is off, as is the person in their out of office, etc. Or you'll be close to wrapping up a contract/project and then they just put it on hold for 2 weeks until they're back. Won't pass it off or even just sign a document while they're on holiday.

Same for the hard stop at the end of their workday. Better get all the collaboration you need done in those few hours that overlap.

And I put "frustration" in quotations because I'm not truly frustrated by it, I kind of appreciate and understand it's just their culture and kind of necessary. If they were working when we were working they'd never have time wit their families.
This is the biggest thing I've always dealt with.

Personal example: I was interviewing with a Canadian company last year and I was told by another American that I would have to rethink how I operate especially since I was Texan. In other words, the Canadians are extremely polite and nice and I would have to temper my bluntness and passion.

He also gave me a practical example of their work/life balance. If you attempt to send an email on the weekend you get a popup that says, "We see it's the weekend...maybe you should reconsider sending this email on Monday."

And this is a 24/7 company. Lol.
LMCane
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1. How many "corporate events' I have to go to outside of work

2. Israelis throwing open the heavy steel security door at our lobby so that it slams shut and reverberates throughout all the offices

3. hugging and backslapping and literally yelling when visitors come to the offices

4. paranoia about sharing information across the companies who are all in the same family

5. standing at the admin desk and laughing and yelling in the mornings.

6. visual conferencing always needs the IT guy to fix every single time I run a meeting

7. when employees are explaining a complex issue and I am literally more confused the more they speak
hbkyle
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AG
Worked for a Spanish company several years ago. I can confirm the August corporate shutdown. I always wanted to take a trip in August to the headquarters just to see if anyone was there.

However, I also worked for an El Paso company. They effectively shut down for spring break. El Paso is so different from the rest of the state that it seemed like a foreign-based company.
akaggie05
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AG
When working at the UK office of my former company, definitely noticed the extreme work/life separation. When the work day was done, that was it.

We were told about some kind of UK law that could result in strict penalties if employees were told to work more than some fairly low amount (44 hours a week maybe?). That said, most managers and other high level types rolled up their sleeves and stayed late with us. They seemed more worried about junior staff reporting them to the government or something.
Whitehouse Road
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AG
I hate how they write the date
BenTheGoodAg
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AG
Yep! Metric date format sucks!
Win At Life
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AG
I once worked with a guy from Scotland who told me;

"Gtpt kckpt dltlrt pryprl an rtlkl da ktlelry"

Yeah, very different.
YouBet
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AG
Whitehouse Road said:

I hate how they write the date
Actually makes sense to me from a technical standpoint. Most granular to least granular.

It's confusing though if you aren't expecting it.
evestor1
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YouBet said:

Whitehouse Road said:

I hate how they write the date
Actually makes sense to me from a technical standpoint. Most granular to least granular.

It's confusing though if you aren't expecting it.
YouBet is a socialist!
YouBet
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AG
evestor1 said:

YouBet said:

Whitehouse Road said:

I hate how they write the date
Actually makes sense to me from a technical standpoint. Most granular to least granular.

It's confusing though if you aren't expecting it.
YouBet is a socialist!
Sad day for me.
Malibu
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YouBet said:

Whitehouse Road said:

I hate how they write the date
Actually makes sense to me from a technical standpoint. Most granular to least granular.

It's confusing though if you aren't expecting it.

At my old UK based company I made a point of trying to make sure the date format was MMM-DD-YYYY and try to be a stickler about it. Our UK team had no interest in changing how they did things until the company's largest customer based in the US was wondering right before Christmas why the product they had ordered for January 3 wasn't arriving until March 1. The company then changed the policy.

The other is more intercultural communication stuff that you don't really understand unless you're from the country. My old boss was a Brit and a couple of times he would be in the US or I would be in the UK and he would say, "when you have a moment, I'd appreciate your attention on this issue." Thats Britspeak for drop everything you're doing right now and focus only on this. I casually go on doing whatever I'm doing until I actually had a moment to consider it, my boss comes by 30 minutes later asking for a progress update and I was like dude chill out. We got to the bottom of the intercultural communication stuff but I still think it's funny.
ATM9000
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AG
YouBet said:

evestor1 said:

YouBet said:

Whitehouse Road said:

I hate how they write the date
Actually makes sense to me from a technical standpoint. Most granular to least granular.

It's confusing though if you aren't expecting it.
YouBet is a socialist!
Sad day for me.


Don't be sad. You are right. Took me a while to get used to, but day month year OR year month day is miles more logical than month day year.
fightingfarmer09
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evestor1 said:

I work for a European company. I often laugh at the different attitude and demeanor of our people overseas. Few examples:

1. Email Americans at 3am CST and say "I need this by 9am today" for items that take three days to produce. When you say "i need a few days" they respond with "Please complete asap, but i do not need it for 5 days." We do this at least twice per month.

2. Tell Americans that they do not get holidays off and should take PTO. Neglecting that their benefits package is 40 PTO days and USA is 15 PTO + 7 Holiday.

3. All video calls have presentations ... our USA video calls have zero presentations within internal meetings.

4. Ask about getting individual raises and bonuses on company-wide state of union calls. I am talking a few hundred people and "Oliver wants to know when he will be getting an increase in salary." or "When do i get my Christmas Bonus" - only 10% of the company is eligible for incentive pay...and they allow public questioning over it. Happens on all company wide calls...never upsets the managment.



What do your foreign companies and co-workers do that make you confused.


My favorite is in the EU (particularly Germans) will hound you to death about a critical project which they will insist that you work insanely fast to meet a crazy deadline. Then once it's complete and needs to ship (requiring their approval) they have disappeared on some 2-3 week vacation without notifying you. So the rush project now sits for a month.

South Americans will filibuster themselves stretching a 30 min call into 3 hours.

Indians…not worth the perma ban.

Commas instead of decimals.

F the metric system.

Cheek kissing and the insistence on using the "bro hug" instead of a handshake.
YouBet
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AG
fightingfarmer09 said:

evestor1 said:

I work for a European company. I often laugh at the different attitude and demeanor of our people overseas. Few examples:

1. Email Americans at 3am CST and say "I need this by 9am today" for items that take three days to produce. When you say "i need a few days" they respond with "Please complete asap, but i do not need it for 5 days." We do this at least twice per month.

2. Tell Americans that they do not get holidays off and should take PTO. Neglecting that their benefits package is 40 PTO days and USA is 15 PTO + 7 Holiday.

3. All video calls have presentations ... our USA video calls have zero presentations within internal meetings.

4. Ask about getting individual raises and bonuses on company-wide state of union calls. I am talking a few hundred people and "Oliver wants to know when he will be getting an increase in salary." or "When do i get my Christmas Bonus" - only 10% of the company is eligible for incentive pay...and they allow public questioning over it. Happens on all company wide calls...never upsets the managment.



What do your foreign companies and co-workers do that make you confused.


My favorite is in the EU (particularly Germans) will hound you to death about a critical project which they will insist that you work insanely fast to meet a crazy deadline. Then once it's complete and needs to ship (requiring their approval) they have disappeared on some 2-3 week vacation without notifying you. So the rush project now sits for a month.

South Americans will filibuster themselves stretching a 30 min call into 3 hours.

Indians…not worth the perma ban.

Commas instead of decimals.

F the metric system.
Kindly share your opinion so that I can proceed with my next opinion.
fightingfarmer09
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YouBet said:

fightingfarmer09 said:

evestor1 said:

I work for a European company. I often laugh at the different attitude and demeanor of our people overseas. Few examples:

1. Email Americans at 3am CST and say "I need this by 9am today" for items that take three days to produce. When you say "i need a few days" they respond with "Please complete asap, but i do not need it for 5 days." We do this at least twice per month.

2. Tell Americans that they do not get holidays off and should take PTO. Neglecting that their benefits package is 40 PTO days and USA is 15 PTO + 7 Holiday.

3. All video calls have presentations ... our USA video calls have zero presentations within internal meetings.

4. Ask about getting individual raises and bonuses on company-wide state of union calls. I am talking a few hundred people and "Oliver wants to know when he will be getting an increase in salary." or "When do i get my Christmas Bonus" - only 10% of the company is eligible for incentive pay...and they allow public questioning over it. Happens on all company wide calls...never upsets the managment.



What do your foreign companies and co-workers do that make you confused.


My favorite is in the EU (particularly Germans) will hound you to death about a critical project which they will insist that you work insanely fast to meet a crazy deadline. Then once it's complete and needs to ship (requiring their approval) they have disappeared on some 2-3 week vacation without notifying you. So the rush project now sits for a month.

South Americans will filibuster themselves stretching a 30 min call into 3 hours.

Indians…not worth the perma ban.

Commas instead of decimals.

F the metric system.
Kindly share your opinion so that I can proceed with my next opinion.


We are owned by an Indian based company.

Common company arguments involve pay because they believe we should be able to hire anyone we want for about $5-6/hr and anything more than that is robbery. Leads to major moral problems.

Our legal teams will spend months arguing with venders about contracts trying to get pointless concessions to the point where the vender will just walk away.

Constant WhatsApp messages about how unsafe, dirty and terrible America is despite wanting to go to the mall to shop on every business trip here.

Going to stop there.
YouBet
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AG
fightingfarmer09 said:

YouBet said:

fightingfarmer09 said:

evestor1 said:

I work for a European company. I often laugh at the different attitude and demeanor of our people overseas. Few examples:

1. Email Americans at 3am CST and say "I need this by 9am today" for items that take three days to produce. When you say "i need a few days" they respond with "Please complete asap, but i do not need it for 5 days." We do this at least twice per month.

2. Tell Americans that they do not get holidays off and should take PTO. Neglecting that their benefits package is 40 PTO days and USA is 15 PTO + 7 Holiday.

3. All video calls have presentations ... our USA video calls have zero presentations within internal meetings.

4. Ask about getting individual raises and bonuses on company-wide state of union calls. I am talking a few hundred people and "Oliver wants to know when he will be getting an increase in salary." or "When do i get my Christmas Bonus" - only 10% of the company is eligible for incentive pay...and they allow public questioning over it. Happens on all company wide calls...never upsets the managment.



What do your foreign companies and co-workers do that make you confused.


My favorite is in the EU (particularly Germans) will hound you to death about a critical project which they will insist that you work insanely fast to meet a crazy deadline. Then once it's complete and needs to ship (requiring their approval) they have disappeared on some 2-3 week vacation without notifying you. So the rush project now sits for a month.

South Americans will filibuster themselves stretching a 30 min call into 3 hours.

Indians…not worth the perma ban.

Commas instead of decimals.

F the metric system.
Kindly share your opinion so that I can proceed with my next opinion.


We are owned by an Indian based company.

Common company arguments involve pay because they believe we should be able to hire anyone we want for about $5-6/hr and anything more than that is robbery. Leads to major moral problems.

Our legal teams will spend months arguing with venders about contracts trying to get pointless concessions to the point where the vender will just walk away.

Constant WhatsApp messages about how unsafe, dirty and terrible America is despite wanting to go to the mall to shop on every business trip here.

Going to stop there.


That last comment is rich considering THEY ARE FROM INDIA.
TheMasterplan
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I can relate to the presentation.

I don't mind that if it shows some technical data for talking points and references. It's hard to adhoc things when you can't show what you're referring to. Not a big presentation by any means though.

Calling a resume a CV.

-Office support Shutting down over christmas for the most part. I dont mind this but have had operations going on where you get no support. With that said, the higher ups (CEO and CFO) will take on some of the additional admin jobs so the support staff gets their time. In other words, the CFO will do the invoices for those two weeks instead of delegating it to the support staff.

-Shutting down during vacation (I don't mind this either and it is a good thing). With that said, if I get a text about something and it's not a massive task I don't mind attending to it - a quick document check, a quick technical question, a quick phone call to clear up some admin etc. It's not head down work.

-Open chat about career and job. This can be a good and bad thing. There doesn't have to be animosity over there.

-Throwing people under the bus in meetings which I don't think is a good thing as you don't always get to push back or have you say in the meeting. You just have to take it.

-Work Christmas parties are huge. I've come not to like these as you get a bit too ****ed up and say things you shouldn't say. This is definitely a UK/Commonwealth classic tradition.
TheMasterplan
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Americans can easily adapt to these nuances as long as they all have good attitudes and keen to take on the challenge. At the same time some foreigners can be hostile to Americans for no other reason than "America." Kill them with kindness and you'll win them over.

It develops your soft skills, makes you more personable overall and improves your project management skills.
TheMasterplan
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Admiral Adama said:

YouBet said:

Whitehouse Road said:

I hate how they write the date
Actually makes sense to me from a technical standpoint. Most granular to least granular.

It's confusing though if you aren't expecting it.

At my old UK based company I made a point of trying to make sure the date format was MMM-DD-YYYY and try to be a stickler about it. Our UK team had no interest in changing how they did things until the company's largest customer based in the US was wondering right before Christmas why the product they had ordered for January 3 wasn't arriving until March 1. The company then changed the policy.

The other is more intercultural communication stuff that you don't really understand unless you're from the country. My old boss was a Brit and a couple of times he would be in the US or I would be in the UK and he would say, "when you have a moment, I'd appreciate your attention on this issue." Thats Britspeak for drop everything you're doing right now and focus only on this. I casually go on doing whatever I'm doing until I actually had a moment to consider it, my boss comes by 30 minutes later asking for a progress update and I was like dude chill out. We got to the bottom of the intercultural communication stuff but I still think it's funny.
That's a great. That to me is something what is so fun about working amongst international people.
TheMasterplan
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fightingfarmer09 said:

YouBet said:

fightingfarmer09 said:

evestor1 said:

I work for a European company. I often laugh at the different attitude and demeanor of our people overseas. Few examples:

1. Email Americans at 3am CST and say "I need this by 9am today" for items that take three days to produce. When you say "i need a few days" they respond with "Please complete asap, but i do not need it for 5 days." We do this at least twice per month.

2. Tell Americans that they do not get holidays off and should take PTO. Neglecting that their benefits package is 40 PTO days and USA is 15 PTO + 7 Holiday.

3. All video calls have presentations ... our USA video calls have zero presentations within internal meetings.

4. Ask about getting individual raises and bonuses on company-wide state of union calls. I am talking a few hundred people and "Oliver wants to know when he will be getting an increase in salary." or "When do i get my Christmas Bonus" - only 10% of the company is eligible for incentive pay...and they allow public questioning over it. Happens on all company wide calls...never upsets the managment.



What do your foreign companies and co-workers do that make you confused.


My favorite is in the EU (particularly Germans) will hound you to death about a critical project which they will insist that you work insanely fast to meet a crazy deadline. Then once it's complete and needs to ship (requiring their approval) they have disappeared on some 2-3 week vacation without notifying you. So the rush project now sits for a month.

South Americans will filibuster themselves stretching a 30 min call into 3 hours.

Indians…not worth the perma ban.

Commas instead of decimals.

F the metric system.
Kindly share your opinion so that I can proceed with my next opinion.


We are owned by an Indian based company.

Common company arguments involve pay because they believe we should be able to hire anyone we want for about $5-6/hr and anything more than that is robbery. Leads to major moral problems.

Our legal teams will spend months arguing with venders about contracts trying to get pointless concessions to the point where the vender will just walk away.

Constant WhatsApp messages about how unsafe, dirty and terrible America is despite wanting to go to the mall to shop on every business trip here.

Going to stop there.
We have an indian guy in procurement so can confirm this. He also has an engineering background. He's good at his job but sometimes have had to step in with vendors to smooth things over but that's sorta the job.
ATM9000
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AG
I'm an American who has worked in a European home office for a few years now. Generally, there are 2 key differences between American and European work and business in my opinion. One is rigorous and literal separation of work and life. The other is Europeans tend to believe in the collective more than the individual.

The European perspective of American workers is they work hard and take a lot of pride in their work. Lack of refinement is around the right description for the negatives to American but not quite what defines it for people here. The Euro perspective is that Americans are really damn sensitive and emotional about their work and individual people. And you know what? Working over here for a while… They aren't wrong about that.

Europeans don't take work personally. You make a mistake and it result in more work for somebody else, you talk about it and you move on… no hard feelings. Americans if you make a mistake and it causes more work for somebody else, that somebody else gets all angry about it and holds it over your head for eternity. If a decision is made that you don't like? Europeans will shrug it off and move on really quickly and get behind it. Americans walk around huffy about it and dwell on the decision forever… and then tend to keep open score on the decision and hold a grudge over the decision maker's head for years.

Most Europeans really don't take business decisions personally which is really refreshing and makes leaving work at work pretty easy to do.

On that note and the collective… they don't really believe in the super worker and kind of embrace that humans will break things and screw stuff up from time to time… nothing drives them crazier about Americans (and this is a very American thing and kind of ridiculous) than when managers describe some person with a bachelors degree with 5 years experience making $100k a year or whatever as irreplaceable or priceless to the team. Or when you are working 50 hours a week and say I'm doing 2 jobs… they find stuff like that hilarious. To them, at work, you are just a cog not bigger than the collective and another one can be found. Europeans also embrace specific boxes of responsibility much more than Americans do. Another example of the lack of emotion to work here vs. America.

I think it's healthy in that way. But yes… the downside is the absolute detachment when you check out for the day or holiday. But I'd also argue that's not a bad thing. Generally, Europeans don't define themselves by their jobs and careers as much as Americans do. And as emotional as Americans tend to get about work, I think Europeans tend to be a bit more sincere and objective when they voice concerns than Americans do. The downside to all of this when it comes to Europeans is they tend to accept more mediocrity and can be a tad rigid for my taste. Americans tend to work in principles whereas Europeans work within rules.
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