A big portion of the employee base of American tech corporations isn't even American - so nicer than who exactly?

Culture and nationality are different things. Competitiveness and toxicity go hand in hand

I haven’t found my European colleagues to be any nicer than the American ones. In fact, they’re often more straightforward in ways that would seem inappropriate or cruel in America.

What they are not, however, is so deeply motivated by fear that if they lose their job, they’ll lose their house/health insurance/families, be labeled a worthless outcast by society etc. That seems to be the primary difference in determining how toxic people’s behavior is in the workplace.

I think Americans are nicer in general than Europeans (which is weird the first time you work with them), but not disturbingly nice like Koreans and Indians (sorry for the cliché but it's true).

Europeans are rude in comparison.

But those are general culture traits. Corporate working culture traits in America are the worst. Even the northeast Asian usual 'this seems dumb, but my manager/chief want it, so I will execute rather than asking for explanations' isn't as insupportable as American office politics (well, in my case it was a partnership Corp+research institute I worked with, so I guess it might have skewed my judgment)

Most of the engineers I know aren’t worried about getting another job. Everyone I know laid off from Big Tech the past year found another job instantly. Probably it’s more true for other roles

Definitely. I didn’t mean Americans are toxic. Workplace makes them different people though

> Money thirst, shameless self promotion, competition etc really make you anxious all the time.

Good people, optimize for the only thing that matters, smart.

Or they have no idea what matters so use something easy to measure as a proxy.