An American professional’s career is displayed publicly as a sequence of positions with dates, visible to their employer and to everyone else. Progression is a matter of public record, and its absence is equally visible.
social media
Glassdoor and Levels.fyi
American employees publish their own compensation to public databases, by company, level and location. The market price of a role is crowdsourced and freely available to anyone considering a move.
Hustle culture
Rise and grind. Sleep is for the weak. The grind never stops. Team no days off.
American sayings in wide circulation, and a genre of social media built on them. The counter-movement exists and is loud, which tells you what it is arguing against.
Quiet quitting
An American phrase that went global in 2022, describing an employee who does their job and nothing beyond it. The phrase calls that quitting. Doing what you were hired to do is framed as a partial withdrawal.
Move fast and break things
Facebook’s internal motto for its first decade. Not move fast and be careful. The breaking is named, accepted, and put in the sentence. It was retired in 2014, which is itself part of the story — the company iterated on its own motto.
Facebook etc.
Social Media: forms of electronic communication (such as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content. First known use: 2004.
Most of the earliest and most prominent social networking software has been developed by Americans. Some examples include:
Myspace – founded by Americans Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe in 2003. It allows users to gain a network of friends, post profiles, blog, form groups, and exchange music and videos.
Facebook – founded by Americans Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes and Brazilian Eduardo Saverin in 2004. It allows users to “friend” other people, exchange messages, organize events, post information, and join groups.
Reddit – founded by Americans Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. It allows users to submit content with a bulletin board format, in which users vote to determine the organization of the posts.
Twitter – founded by Americans Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, and “Biz” Stone in 2006.
Tumblr – founded by American David Karp in 2007. It allows users to post content to a short-form blog, which can be followed by other users.
WhatsApp – founded by American Brian Acton and Ukrainian-American Jan Koum. It allows users to send text messages, images, video, audio, and location information on smartphones.
Snapchat – founded by Americans Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown in 2011. It allows users to send videos, photos, text, and drawings to a controlled list of recipients.