Aussie Engineer's Take on Working for US Tech Firms: Time Zones, Culture, and Stability

2025-01-12

An Australian engineer shares his decade-long experience working for American tech companies. He details the challenges of cross-timezone collaboration: mornings are spent catching up on overnight work, but afternoons offer invaluable focused time. While loneliness can be an issue, strong teamwork and documentation culture mitigate this. He also notes the inherent instability of working for a US company from abroad, but highlights the larger scale, better compensation, and higher brand recognition as key motivators. Finally, he discusses cultural differences between Australia and the US, where Americans are more enthusiastic and Australians more understated, requiring adaptation to the American work culture.

Development cross-cultural work