> They say the German education isn’t anything to tout and having an American education on your CV is a big +.

Having lived in Europe for 30+ years, I have never heard of this outside higher education at very famous institutions, e.g. Stanford, Harvard, MIT.

In fact, primary and secondary schools in the US are usually seen as quite insufficient.

Where in Europe? I’ve hired in both Portugal and Germany and have seen a ton of US education. This is for developer positions I would expect it different if you are hiring line cooks.

I don’t quite understand where you are going with this. Have you hired US nationals, or US educated people? Either way, I haven’t seen many US educated people in Europe, and especially in Portugal.

> This is for developer positions I would expect it different if you are hiring line cooks.

I’m a lead engineer myself.

Again, I yet have to find anyone in Europe who would have primary and secondary education in the US in high consideration. In fact, after traveling in Asia, I had somewhat the same experience: top US universities were highly valued, but anything below that was mostly dismissed.

For both places I was simply filling roles. I think maybe 80% local and 20% us nationals? Maybe 90/10? Probably 50% had US educations listed. Maybe 40%? But it’s not like I didn’t see any. I’m not sure what you think is surprising. US people study abroad too. It’s very common and tech people tend to pick US because it’s heavy in tech.

> Probably 50% had US educations listed. Maybe 40%?

That is an extremely large percentage if the candidate pool was chosen at random. That would be surprising in Europe.

Anyway, I didn’t say it was surprising, but it is rare.

> US people study abroad too. It’s very common and tech people tend to pick US because it’s heavy in tech.

Sure. But there is a difference between hiring US nationals abroad, who likely would be US educated, and US educated Portuguese or German nationals, who are a very small minority of the population, and that’s what I was asking.

We joke that the us learning system is only 4 answers away due to the thing with multiple choice.

I have no clue if your education system is better or ours.

It's just that we think multiple choice tests are easier than free form.

most of the people I know, who do this kind of "study abroad" in highschool (which to my understanding is on average well below Abitur/A-levels) have their parents paying (quite a bit) for the privilege^. From what I've seen around, most of this activity is centered also around private "pay-to-your-A-levels"-schools. Notably these people might think of + on their CV (while being stupid).

^And then our public school had some funded, hidden exchange with Geelong Grammar school :)

Exactly my point. From my experience hiring in tech Europeans are very quick to mention US education believing it’s a big advantage.

Personally at that role it was an English role so I only took from their US education that they can function in an English environment. I didn’t give two shits about their Carnegie Mellon masters.