u/Type-94Shiranui

I am bilingual in Japanese and English (grew up speaking both). Sometimes my friends likes to watch dubs of Japanese media, which I specifically really hate.

I am not sure how to describe it, but I find when dramatic/chuuni/serious lines are translated from Japanese to English, often times they come across as very childish or cringy to me. However, when I listen to them in Japanese, I feel is aesthetically sounds cooler/serious/etc.

I thought about exactly why I see it this way, but can't really put something specific to it. I'm wondering if its just cultural or the aesthetics of the language itself.

Old job was at a big tech company. I was worried about being asked to relocate or layoffs, so I made a switch to a financial company.

Every single day, I've regretted making the change. It's my 3rd full time job outside of college, and I feel I got somewhat sweet talked by the recruiter. Their was also questions I should've asked during the interview, and things they didn't reveal.

Pros

• Good work life balance so far (Manager seems to recognize the job misalignment and the fact that I hated a lot of the operational work initially assigned, so he re-assigned them to the consultant and has me working more on the automation/dev side of things)
• 2-3 Days In office (officially 3 days, however I found the flag is 2 days. I just come in 2 days a week and leave at 12pm)
• Seems more stable then tech industry

Cons

• Tech stack is very legacy and I constantly need to fight with other teams just to improve basic things
• Office is full of boomers/dinosaurs who seem to be ok with not really improving things
• Much less upside, I am basically making bottom of the TC band I was at my previous role
• I was told their would be occasional overtime. It turns out that due to change control policies, it's almost guaranted I will have weekend or after hours Friday work if I want to do any production changes. This really fucking annoyed me
• I am barely getting to use any of my AWS skills that I have strongly grown over the past 4 years. I have to constantly fight with the devops and cloud engineering teams to get basic access, spin up resources, etc.
• Manager is in the UK and extremely busy, he missed almost half of my 1:1s and often times does not show up at all unless I ask him about it. I don't really feel supported even if he is a nice person. I think due to him being remote, he really does not recognize how much I'm already mentally clocked out.
• I feel my career is regressing massively every day I spend here, the work I'm doing here is not interesting, nor am I learning anything, nor am I progressing in my career in any way.
• Massive sign on clawback, 90k that I'd have to pay back pre-tax. It lowers by 25% per year

At this point, even the 2 days I am in the office, I'm pretty much just with a bitch face all day looking kinda angry and I'm mostly on my phone applying to jobs. I kinda stopped giving a fuck and feel resentful of the job, even if the manager and the people are nice. Part of me hopes they fire me and I can just keep the sign on while I look for a new job. I'm already trying to interview to get out of this situation, but idk I just feel angry and resentful at the job itself.

Long story short, I went from 1 tech job to another. I can't go back to the old one due to being asked to relocate if I want to come back. I'm around 4 months into my new job (Note that their was no probation period and I also got a massive sign on w/ clawback, so unfortunately I'm kind of stuck here to some degree, and the company is also stuck with me unless they fire me for cause for something egregious).

The new job feels a lot different from what I expected, and doesn't really align with the tech stack/skill set, nor the role/career path I was working. In fact, it feels like a step back both in terms of work and skills.

I brought up the role alignment once to my manager, and he just told me something along the lines of "if you can justify using X I will back it". Unfortunately this doesn't really ease my concerns, and he keeps missing my 1 on 1s so I'm kinda left in limbo (he's in a different country and seems extremely busy in meetings all day)

At this point, I'm aggressively applying to new jobs because I'm kind of losing hope in the new job. I'm thinking during my next 1:1 to be very blunt and bring up concerns the role doesn't seem to align with my skillset and if I can't use X,Y,Z, it might be a role mismatch.

Or is this too risky, and should I just lay low, just do the work to a minimum, then leave? I honestly think the people here are decent and work life balance is good, its just that the work itself feels like a massive step back, so I'm thinking it might be worth being blunt and trying to see if I can make the role work.

But it may be possible the role itself is just a complete mismatch and theirs only so much my manager can do. Part of me feels the role was kinda oversold to me, not to the point of being a bait and switch, but heavily exaggerated.

I was told I can't go back to my old job.. would need to relocate halfway across the country.

I'm hating my new job, but I'm trying to get a perspective on whether I was truly bait and switched

What I did on my old job/described on resume

• Create internal applications in AWS for managing a massive fleet of cameras + on prem windows servers (Think React + AppSync for the website, then a lot of the automations would be done through Step Functions, DynamoDB, Lambdas, Queues, S3, etc)
• Create API's, AWS Glue, inventory/data pipelines for other teams to get information about our cameras, or even get a up to date snapshot of what the cameras were looking at
• Support major migrations etc by automating the process via AWS
• Full flexibility to build whatever I wanted in AWS, when I wanted

New Job

• Create automation to resize vms in vmware, clean snapshots, etc
• 0 use of AWS and if I want to build anything in AWS, must go through some separate cloud governance team that approves everything. At this point it's not even clear if I'm the one who can build it
• Refactoring and migrating very old automations and redoing them in PowerShell
• Basic Windows SysAdmin/Engineering work like installing stuff on Windows server manually via RDP (we don't have access to create packages in SCCM...)
• Some Dev work (I am creating a React + C# portal to just have a view of our inventory and statuses of things.. very basic. Note that this was something I had to propose and bring up).
• Extreme levels of bureaucracy. Simply getting API dev access to Servicenow takes weeks on end.

I'm feeling I was kind of oversold on the role and it was different then what I expected. The manager told me the role was

• Windows/Devops, that I'd come in and start modernizing stuff to infrastructure as code, ci/cd, etc. I see 0 opportunity to use infrastructure as code in this environment.
• Some after hours work if it gets busy (no its pretty much guaranteed due to change requests having to be done on the weekend)

During the interview, the team was basically down 2 people, and the 1 other FTE co-worker was on vacation, so I didn't get a chance to talk to him to get a better idea of what the role entailed. Part of me is thinking the manager just wanted someone competent in PowerShell etc and didn't care about anything else, so he oversold the role to try to convince me to get in.

I'm around 2 months in and I'm strongly thinking I fucked up, that my AWS skills will atrophy here. In fact my manager has been so busy with meetings and kept cancelling my 1:1 that I haven't gotten even a chance to bring my concerns up.

Do I just ask him straight up if theirs any opportunity for heavy AWS work here or at this role, that I fear I will lose on my AWS skills? I feel it will probably set off alarm bells that will imply the role isn't a good fit (I think people can tell to some degree that I'm unhappy), but at the same time I am so unhappy with the work I'm doing that I'm kinda of thinking of fucking it and asking anyway. Also my manager is in a different country and has only met me a few times, so perhaps he does not realize how unhappy I am.

I'm still confused why he hired me in the first place (perhaps he was desperate) when my resume clearly shows I come from Cloud Engineering background. Sometimes I feel I was bait and switched, or perhaps it was partly my fault for not asking the right question, but I find myself almost feeling resentful of the work I am doing. My friends are telling me to just coast and quiet quit while applying to a new job.