I don’t think I’m built for corporate life

I was recently assigned to this team, and everything has been pretty overwhelming. There are multiple projects going on at the same time, and I was thrown into them before I had much context.

The culture here feels very much like “don’t ask— you should be able to figure things out on your own.” So when I asked for clarification on a few things, I was basically told that I should figure it out by myself.

I had a 1:1 with my manager, and he said that I’m not taking on as much work as expected. He asked whether I’m satisfied with my current workload and if I’d be willing to take on more work. He also asked me to walk him through everything I’m working on, since it didn’t seem like I was working on much at the moment.

That’s when I cracked, got really anxious, started talking too fast, and ended up saying everything I’d been holding back until now — like how the team lacks structure, the projects feel very ad hoc, and there isn’t much alignment across work streams. Also added I was put directly onto projects from day one and had been working long hours almost every day just trying to get up to speed.

I don’t know why I said all of that. Normally, I’d frame things in a more polished way. But I just got too tired of sugarcoating everything.