The whole team speaks English for me, but it is noticeably uncomfortable for everyone. They skip inviting me for lunch because they don't want to go through same act during lunch.
I am a frontender with AWS and GCP experience. This whole place runs and breaths Microsoft Azure.
They hired me as a Frontend Lead to manage 3 other devs and external provider's deliverables. I had no time to takeover from previous guy, because I wanted to have a break between jobs, I was burnt out.
I feel at a loss, at their way of working. It is a real life "the office" environment. DevOps team just deleted whole development IT infra with no notice, because it was costing too much apparently, and it does indeed. A meeting titled "ProjectA Mobbing", with no agenda, none takes notes or action points. %80 of people are kind of sleeping through the meetings. Person who calls the meeting just goes on fixing IT infra while 8 people in meeting watches.
How do I quit nicely here? Is it too early after 3 weeks?
Do I say, I am unfit for this company and environment? or lie and say I have another job offer?
PS : There is a non-zero chance admitting unfit for role can put me in a legal trouble, as I am self-employed through my own company through a broker making %40 as I am.
If you don't want to learn the local language, then perhaps you should start looking in companies or countries that do speak your language primarily. I would think there's a high chance of encountering a similar issue again if you stay in that location.
Also, start implementing some standards like meeting agendas and action items. This is the type of stuff a lead should be setting the standards on.
I would normally try to have a night out and buy some drinks and get the subject on discussion after hours.
It could be "as simple" as saying that they don't always have to speak English after hours or during lunch. Depending on what you think about that ofc.
I did the same and left a job within a month for similar reasons.
I really don't understand how you're self-employed and at the same time you have to worry about how to quit.
I advise others to give something two full months before bouncing
I usually don't follow my advice but this time I did
It was a big mistake -- it just burned me out -- big-time zapped my emotional energy and I took a couple months off afterwards before I really starting to look again
I told my new manager that I felt bad felt like things were off everything was wrong yes I'm actually trying hard to figure out WTF you guys are doing but it's a literal disaster and I've been in plenty of disasters even helped create them but this is a whole new level of fucketty
Mgr blew it off
Which makes sense because they created it
At one point I took it as a challenge let me see if I can make it work here life is fun and not that serious for a relatively privileged dude like me I'm prob not going to starve
Had a couple of goodish days
But ultimately felt like the company was a loser and I usually like to be in psychopath startups actually trying to do something "make a dent in the universe" hopefully not an evil dent
So I gave it the bezos test
Will I regret having bounced from this shit hole in five years?
No
And there were some nice and smart people there but that was mostly irrelevant to my day to day
So part of my equation the biggest part was
What is my purpose of this life?
It was not I decided to stick it out at some shit job
I wanted to do bigger and much much better impactful things and felt like there was zero chance of that happening there
All stuff I should have known before I joined but eh
So my advice
Tell someone
Give it the old college try
Think about making that two month mark
Start looking for your next gig
If it still sucks at two months you have to go
If you want to do something in this life
Lot of people with choices are happy to live a 1x life
I've usually chased and have sometimes found that 10x life
And it's gd amazing
I haven't had conventional success (yet?)
But at least I've tried to live
Some people are afraid to die
Some people are afraid to live
That kind of thing