“I would love to hear about what Mark thinks of the cultural and corporate differences between America and the rest of the world. He's worked with people in other countries and now traveled internationally, give us your take on corporate America compared to the rest of the world.”
- Andrew Nash (the artist formerly known as AB)
My Life is Weird
The start of my “career” has been… unique?
I’ve had four jobs, all of them fully remote and requiring me to work with teams based outside the US.
In my short working life, I’ve worked w/ people based in India, Croatia, South Korea, Romania, South Africa, Switzerland, Australia, Ukraine, Mexico, and the US.
If you aren’t caught up on the latest and greatest in the krammatic resume, here’s the recap:
CoinLedger (Jan-May 2021)
was a marketing and customer service grunt for a TurboTax-esque software company specializing in crypto trading + accounting (im so gooood at filling out 8949s now)
the team was headquartered in Austin (technically), but the founders lived across the US, the head of customer service was based in Mexico, and our engineering team (whom I had to pester to answer questions like “why doesn’t this work” all the time) was mostly in Europe
Unchained (Feb 2021-March 2022)
published 250 newsletters, helped research and produce 100+ podcasts, ran 2 Twitter accounts, and launched an NFT subscription service
Laura, the host and my boss, works from NYC, the video editor was based in South Africa, and my co-editor double checked my work from India
Konstellation (May 2021-Feb 2022)
joined the squad as part of the “financial innovation” team, which means I just read about fake internet money everyday and pitched weird crypto ideas. Ended up working full-time as an ecosystem manager — meaning I got to do cool stuff like research tokenomics, oversee an NFT marketplace, etc.
so here’s where my international streak really went hot — the majority of the team was based in South Korea. Two other small teams were housed in NYC and Ukraine. And then there was me (a Texan) and my dood Arjun (Dehli).
LI.FI (Feb 2022+)
ok so LI.FI is sort of like stripe but for crypto? and I do BD there (meaning I explain how to use our tech in the background of crypto transactions to companies for like 20 hours a week) and I also help out on the research side writing about ~bridges~. v exciting stuff.
LI.FI is wildly international. Most of our squad is in Germany (Berlin), but we have doods in India, Croatia, the US, Romania, South Africa, and Switzerland. I’ve also had two co-workers based in Australia and Japan.
I guess the main point here is that I’ve worked with a lot of people from a lot of different places.
Oddly enough, after writing all this down and thinking for 10 minutes, I honestly don’t have any HUGE thoughts to share. Sorry AB.
But I do have a few takeaways that are worth mentioning.
Here are a few things I’ve noticed as a member of the global workforce:
Two or three or four week vacations are acceptable in most parts of Europe… as long as you work your ass off for the rest of the year. I kind of love this concept — instead of taking a day or two off, a bunch of my co-workers in Europe take extended vacations to fully recuperate and unplug. Especially in a digital environment, I think this is a really healthy way to live.
Working hours are a social construct and shouldn’t be abided by if you work digitally/internationally. One of the favorite things I’ve noticed is how some of my co-workers work from like 1-9 pm just because they can. Personally, I’ve found that I like to take calls and write late at night — I’m just more efficient at that time.
There is very little talent coming out of the US in terms of engineering and coding that is not monopolized by MANGA companies. Almost everyone I work with is based outside the US (tho this might be because crypto has such opaque regulatory clarity).
I would say culture shock has been quite minimal in terms of workplace environment and communication styles. I work in the tech industry, so I’m probably biased, but English seems to be the predominant language for comms and if I ever need to chat w/ someone in a different langauge there is google translate, so that’s just not an issue. On top of that, like, work is work. The difference between a company based in Berlin and one based in South Korea or New York is minimal in my experience — if you get things done, you get rewarded. If you’re lazy, well, then you’re fired (though maybe one difference is that maybe international bosses are a bit quicker to pull the “fire” trigger, but, again, I don’t have enough data to back that up).
Email and texting is dead. WhatsApp and Telegram and Discord are the future of communication — especially in the international context.
Ok, So That Was Probably More Boring Than You Wanted
Funny, when I started writing this piece, I felt like I would have a lot to say about the differences between cultures and stuff.
But, in reality, it all feels pretty similar to me. I don’t have big sweeping juxtapositions to share. Work is work — and people around the world are still just people.
- kram