OPINION25 January 2017

View from Silicon Valley

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Features Impact Media North America Opinion UK

In his first column from the US, Twitter’s Matt Taylor highlights the main differences between working in research in the US and the UK.

San Francisco golden gate bridge

Ask anyone what their favourite holiday activities are and you’ll soon hear how much they love people-watching. For me, the professional version of this has always been working on international research projects. Whether it’s meeting clients and colleagues in different countries, talking to consumers in qual groups or finding patterns in data that tie people together across whole continents, learning about people in different cultures and countries is surely one of the great joys of working in our industry.

I was lucky enough to transfer from London to San Francisco last summer for a new role at Twitter and every week I seem to bump into another cultural quirk that sets our two countries apart. Aside from battling spellcheck to stop it turning ‘s’ into ‘z’ or deleting ‘u’, life as a researcher here is similar enough to make it easy to settle in but different enough to make it surprisingly challenging.

I’ve been thinking about which ...