Management culture has issues, but in the tech industry, management has been technical in nature for a generation now.
I've funded startups in Israel and the US, and trust me when I say that the mindset of the average IC engineer in Israel versus the US is a night and day difference.
The Israeli IC will be extremely opinionated and will fight for their opinions, and if it makes sense from a business perspective, the strategy would change. But the Israeli IC when fighting these battles would also try to make a business case.
On the other hand, when I used to be a SWE, I almost never saw my peers try to fight for engineering positions while also leveraging arguments supporting the business. That's why I became a PM, but I noticed the same IC SWEs like the former overwhelmingly became PMs. And then a subset of those PMs become founders or VCs like I did.
I've found solutions and sales engineers to be the best management track individuals - technical enough to not be bullshitted by a SWE who really really loves this specific stack, but also business minded enough to drive outcomes that generate revenue.
But anyhow, the point is there is a mindset issue amongst Americans across the entire gamut of the American tech industry - especially amongst those who started their careers in the past 10 years.
This is the reason. I logged in to basically say the same thing. I used to be this way, and give opinions, but you cause problems over time that ends up with you getting disciplined in subtle ways or fired.
Yeah, it’s hilarious to be having this conversation about MLEs while attributing the bad outcomes to anything other than poorly designed reward functions, i.e. management. If an engineer burned millions on failed training runs because they did a shit job of creating a policy that maximized for the desired outcome, they’d get canned, but that’s just a Tuesday for your average MBA with VC backing.
It’s more nuanced than that. Americans on the west coast can express dissent; the means, however, are indirect and easily missed by managers who lack cross cultural competence. There’s also less motivation for a worker at a large successful American firm to express dissent in the first place. Employees at smaller firms speak up earlier.
The Israeli IC will be extremely opinionated and will fight for their opinions, and if it makes sense from a business perspective, the strategy would change. But the Israeli IC when fighting these battles would also try to make a business case.
That’s not because they have different engineering perspectives, that’s an Israeli cultural trait. Israeli’s tend to index more towards directness in their communication. That’s definitely not the case with someone from, say, India.
I've funded startups in Israel and the US, and trust me when I say that the mindset of the average IC engineer in Israel versus the US is a night and day difference.
The Israeli IC will be extremely opinionated and will fight for their opinions, and if it makes sense from a business perspective, the strategy would change. But the Israeli IC when fighting these battles would also try to make a business case.
On the other hand, when I used to be a SWE, I almost never saw my peers try to fight for engineering positions while also leveraging arguments supporting the business. That's why I became a PM, but I noticed the same IC SWEs like the former overwhelmingly became PMs. And then a subset of those PMs become founders or VCs like I did.
I've found solutions and sales engineers to be the best management track individuals - technical enough to not be bullshitted by a SWE who really really loves this specific stack, but also business minded enough to drive outcomes that generate revenue.
But anyhow, the point is there is a mindset issue amongst Americans across the entire gamut of the American tech industry - especially amongst those who started their careers in the past 10 years.