Americans want to work in subject matter areas which offer solid compensation, a clear path for advancement, and increasing opportunities and options. The American economy, therefore American companies, value the generalist more than the specialist.
Job Security
Americans know that no job is truly secure. Job security comes only through being valuable to the organisation, continuous skills development, steady career advancement, and constant exposure to new opportunities.
Advancement
In the U.S. career advancement is second to compensation in importance. Americans strive to move up the hierarchy. In fact, advancement often brings with it a significant increase in compensation. Advancement and compensation go hand-in-hand.
Jeff Bezos Is Getting Astronaut Wings
Starting in January, space tourists will not receive a participation trophy for flying to space. But everyone will be on the honor roll.
The changes will help the F.A.A. avoid the potentially awkward position of proclaiming that some space tourists are only passengers, not astronauts.
The advent of space tourism, and especially the F.A.A.’s new rules, sparked debate over who can be called an astronaut.
But future space tourists should not despair a lack of post-flight flair. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX have each presented paying and guest passengers with custom-designed wings.
Adults. With a lot of money. Go on a space flight. As passengers. Then want to be called astronauts. What?
An American in Berlin
From an American:
“I started working for a German company a few years ago and was immediately excited to find that they had a culture of frequent feedback.
As the weeks went on, the feedback kept on coming. Very quickly, I began to see a pattern; it was almost entirely negative. All delivered amazingly well, with examples of how I’d fucked up alongside helpful guidance on how I might want to improve.
The onslaught continued; it was relentless. It became apparent to me that there was very little chance of me passing my probation period if this continued. So I buckled down, pushed myself to breaking point and put in those extra hours to save my job. But still, it kept continuing critical feedback, after critical feedback.
For the first time in my career, I was going to fail my probation period. There was no point in getting feedback on how I improve the situation. I was getting it daily. I was just shit.
So finally, my final probation review came around. Everything was excellent; the company was super happy with my progress and delivery. I passed my probation period with flying colours. But it had broken me. I was fried and burnt out.”
From a German:
“I have recently started working in an entirely new industry, leading a small team. Shortly after joining, my team’s scope changed to a new problem space.
Again, this company had an active feedback culture and processes. Constant feedback was given to the team every two weeks from leadership. As we built the team and worked out how we were going to achieve our new goals, we got feedback all the time. And it was always positive.
This didn’t play well for me. I knew that there was no way that we could be that good, we were a team with little experience in what we were doing, how could we be doing that well? There must be areas for improvement.
As this continued, positive feedback began to feel more and more empty. I went hunting for critical feedback. Unfortunately, this manifested in me trying to find critical input for the team bellow me. I became overly focused on trying to find areas for improvement in the team.
The problem came to a head when one of my team said ‘I only get negative feedback from you, and I don’t know what to do about it.’ I was so focused on finding the negative areas that we could improve on, and I had not given any support for improvement. I had also failed to celebrate the positive.”
Due Process
In the U.S. Constitution only one command is stated twice: in the 5th and 14th Amendments: „… or be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ….“
This is known as the Due Process Clause, which guarantees that all levels of government in the U.S. must operate within the law and provide fair procedures.
The right of due process is deeply embedded in American thinking, and therefore in the thinking of Americans at the workplace. It is the promise, the guaranty, that a conflict will not be resolved without a process which is fair, transparent, and protects the rights of those involved in the conflict.
It is a question of fairness, of how Americans define what is just. Due Process. It’s what an American employee expects from their next-level management when that manager aims to resolve a conflict within the team.
“I’d give it a B+”
August 10, 2015. 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. National Public Radio (NPR). The segment is Marketplace.
Stating that many students (pupils from elementary to high school) are returning to school, the announcer reports that school-related consumer shopping – supplies, clothes and electronics – is down 5% or more.
An expert is interviewed briefly. He is asked to give a grade for the disappointing results thusfar. His voice is low, unanimated, sounding a bit depressed: “I’d give it a B+.”
B+ is only half a grade from an A. And an A is considered to be excellent.
“Almost everyone gets an A”
A comment by a German with extensive experience at the university level in the U.S.: “I think the real issue here is not how grades are officially classified but that there is a much stronger tendency of grade inflation in the U.S.
Almost everyone gets an A, whereas a B already feels like a failure even though it’s officially considered “good”.
Germans – at least at university level – are much more likely to give a student a C and think that she/he did a good job. When professors give a B they think the student’s paper is great. A basically means a professor could have written this.”
Rankings
Rankings – or standings – are particularly popular in the U.S. Where an individual, team, organization „stands“ is always in competitive comparison to other individuals, teams, organizations.
Examples of college and university rankings include US News and Business Report, Princeton Review College Rankings, College Prowler Traditional College and University Rankings. Subjects of rankings include Liberal Arts Colleges, National University, Research, Student Satisfaction, Diversity, Alumni Networks, among others.
Business school rankings are found in BusinessWeek, Forbes, US News Business School Rankings, Princeton Review Business School Rankings, Wall Street Journal Business School Rankings, Poets&Quants, the Economist. Subsets include region, country, specialization, composite, and endowment.
Law School rankings are found in Vault, LLM Guide, Princeton Review Law School Rankings, US News & World Report, Gourman Report, Hylton, Leiter, National Law Journal, QS World University Rankings, and Judging Law School Rankings.
Corporate rankings are found in Fortune 500, MarketWatch, Most Ethical Companies Rankings, Netweek Green Rankings, Careers.org Company Rankings, Forbes Company Rankings, SEO Company Rankings. Subcaterogies include revenue, ecologically friendliness, ethical behavior, innovation, size, industry, sector, social media presence, pay, employee satisfaction, and career development.
„What’s the Point of a Professor?“
The New York Times online pubished an opinion piece by Mark Bauerlein, Professor of English Literature at Emory University in Atlanta, on May 9, 2015, entitled „What’s the Point of a Professor?“
In it Bauerlein – clearly an American of German descent – writes: „In 1960, only 15 percent of grades were in the A range, but now the rate is 43 percent, making A the most common grade by far.“
The auther further states that faculty members’ attitudes are kindly, too. In one national survey, 61 percent of students said that professors frequently treated them „like a colleague/peer,“ while only 8 percent heard frequent „negative feedback about their academic work.“
According to the survey more than half leave the graduation ceremony believing that they are „well prepared“ in speaking, writing, critical thinking and decision-making.“
„You can’t become a moral authority“, writes Bauerlein, „if you rarely challenge students in class and engage them beyond it. If we professors do not do that, the course is not an induction of eager minds into an enlarging vision. When it comes to students, we shall have only one authority: the grades we give. We become not a fearsome mind or a moral light, a role model or inspiration. We become accreditors.“