When you work in a large, heterogenous organization, it is important to pay attention to these differences, or else you end up either assuming someone did nothing or is a useless braggart because their culture doesn't match your own.

At least you can take credit for your own work, which is better than never being able to get into management (say, become a "cadre" in France) just because you didn't go to a certain school, no matter how good you are or how much experience you have built up. Ivy league elitism exists in the US too, but it's not even close to how prevalent it is in a country like France. To me that's a much worse form of ego brain rot than America's.