As a non-American, I think that Americans are special in that they have the right combination of hard work and personal initiative and efficiency. To oversimplify, Europeans are efficient workers, but unlike Americans, they use their efficiency not to produce more but to work less and enjoy life. East Asians are hard workers but they tend to favor group cohesion over maximizing individual potential, which is not as efficient.

I am not saying that one culture is better than another, but I think the American way is particularly productive, particularly stressful too.

As a non-American, but one who worked in US companies for decades, I feel Americans are influenced by economic gigantism. The American experience is of triumphing with audacious, go big or go home schemes that others wouldn't or couldn't attempt.

To cherry pick one example, during WWII the US audaciously created airstrips on tiny pacific islands to fight the Japanese. Few people imagined it was possible to freight in the bulldozers, machines and materials to accomplish this, and it was game changing. And of course we have the Manhattan project. Railroads. Gigantic IT companies like Oracle, IBM, Apple and more lately Google.

These successes fed into American exceptionalism.

This has its pros and cons. Many people have had the experience of starting work at US Megacorp and being astonished at the waste, ineptitude and back stabbing that happens - yet the corporate continues to thrive and generate mountains of money. The experience of that easy money breeds an unhealthy version of American exceptionalism where people start to believe they will and should succeed - just because American.

Things are different elsewhere in the world. Up and comers make do with what they have and struggle upwards while the USA cruises. One example I like are the new Chinese fabbing companies like JLCPCB. Any two man upstart tech company use their online tools to design a PCB, then have their factory fabicate the board, solder on all the components and connectors, and receive it by post a few days later.

It's pretty obvious now that PCB manufacture is an absolute core competency in tech going forward, yet the US is nowhere in this. The only US competitors seem stuck in a local minimum where they get assured business at generous prices from security-sensitive govt agencies who can't outsource to China, but can't remotely compete on price with their Chinese competitors on price or even quality and timeliness.

I feel this is true of Americans and Europeans. And as an American, I've been migrating myself more and more into the European mindset. I put in my 8 hours, and I'm done, then I do non-work related activities for the next 8 hours, then I sleep for the next.