Having worked with an american company now for the fourth time in the last 20 years (either onsite in the states or supporting/consulting the company remotely), my opinion of American work ethic is totally at odds with what we are led to believe. i.e. the whole "American Dream, you work you can achieve anything", we work such long hours, have so little holiday, etc.
My observations are.
Generally very little planning aptitude, yet expect everything to have been done yesterday.
A vast amount of talk but little action, so they are forced to work long hours to get anything done.
Very bad at setting expectations, but very quick to criticise if the undefined expectations have not been met.
Very narrow minded and don't look at the big picture.
Maybe a bit of a rant. But my current customer is doing my head in. Trying to plan our work in without consulting us at all, asking the impossible, without giving us any background on what they are trying to achieve and then get surprised when we sent ask them for a PO for the additional high cost resources/hardware we need to bring in at short notice.
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CLIENT: I’m not too sure about the blue…
ME: Actually, that’s green.
CLIENT: Who’s the client?
ME: You.
CLIENT: And what color is it?
ME: …blue?
CLIENT: Right. Now let me see what other shades of blue we have.
We settled on pine-tree ”blue.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy3rjQGc6lA