It used to be a dream job. Now I've relocated back to Europe and want nothing to do with American Big Tech. It's become toxic and completely counter to my values.
America has become a much darker place that has a very different place in the world. American tech companies have not just accepted, but actively embraced this transition. I am not interested in joining them and being complicit.
Perhaps it is due to the outward-facing, civic-oriented values coming out of WW2?
There was a lot of reflection in America on what went wrong in German pre-war thinking and culture coming out of that period.
The WW2 men in their 20s in 1940 were in their 40s in 1960s and their political power would have kept growing through peer older politicians into the 90s.
European companies exist to extract profit without regard to decency, same as American companies. BP filling up the Gulf of Mexico with oil? European. Wirecard's fraud? European. HSBC money laundering? European. Dieselgate? European.
I'm sure I could find more.
Hell, Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and raised by Soviet parents.
The US was founded mainly as an experiment in European mercantile colonialism. This is just a continuation of that.
The downside of there not being any American exceptionalism is that everything you see in America is not an exception.
Systemically and structurally? Already on its way there.
Excessive moral policing results in strangling regulations, which is exactly what Europe is facing right now. The opposite of innovation.
Good luck in your endeavors.
Seems like a much better bet for my values, at least.