For example, at one of the orgs I worked my team lead was based in (and native to) a country in the south of Africa. While hammering out a big feature req he told us, based in Europe, through Teams text chat he wouldn't be around for a few hours because he wanted to take a afternoon nap.
We thought he was just joking around, and we needed his opinions a little while later because of something we ran into so we tried to dial him in: no response. Chat: no response. Turns out the guy was really off taking an afternoon nap.
Luckily we could solve things without his help, but to us in Europe that was really weird. Later we did some research and discovered that people in that part of the world really like to take afternoon naps, even though they should be at work...
The customer was often Indonesian and would write bug reports in the language. The non-Indo speakers would just run them through Google translate and comment what they understood and those who were native speakers would correct them if they were mistaken. Especially when there's sarcasm or some cultural context.
There were a few who only spoke the Chinese dialects, and we'd use an intermediary in meetings, and AI/Google translate on text and code. This was also a good use of AI - it was fluent in whatever language, Java or Mandarin and could piece them together well.
Anyway, yeah, it's workable. Nobody knows all the languages. In engineering, there's more empathy for this, especially from the multilinguals.
1- Speak slowly. Don't rush it
2- Its fine to formulate what you want to say in your mind before saying it. take your time.
3- Use a phone and record yourself speaking about different subject. Practice, practice and practice.
4- Some audiences are harder than others. French people for example tend to nitpick and want you to be really fluent. While most english speakers are fine with your speaking, but it depends on the audience and who you are speaking to.
5- You obviously need to immerse yourself in the language you want to speak. Tv-shows, Movies, News and even tabloid. The latter is actuallt good to understand jokes, innuendos and other subtle conversations.
One thing I also noted, is that if you follow/watch people who are not native speakers, they actually tend to explain things/concepts better. Because they are limited in words and have limited scope compared to native speaker. Anyone remarked this?
I suppose a lot of that time taking is what feels awkward but you're right it's better to be understood and clear.
Love the idea of non-natives explaining better in some ways but that doesn't feel like me right now.
It shows up a lot in engineering discussions if you have french colleagues too.
I’ve learned to modulate my southern accent and speak slower over the years as I’ve worked in more customer facing roles and even more now that a large part of our company is Latin America and Brazil.
As far as idioms, I did introduce my former CTO who was Indian to the term “sausage making”. Any time he would get into his “geek mode” and want to know the technical details I told him he really didn’t want to know how the sausage was made.
My native language is PHP, which, as everyone knows, is the demonically fluent tongue of the Ninth Circle. Down there, variables appear from the void, arrays shift shape without warning, and error messages read like ancient curses. Beautiful stuff.
Recently I tried picking up Rust, which people kept hyping as some kind of angelic, higher-order language… but after using it, I’m convinced it’s just the void teaching itself self-esteem. Every compiler message sounds like: “I’m perfect. You’re the problem.”
So yeah — working in a non-native language is tough. But if I can survive switching between demon-speak and cosmic-void-whispering, you’ll be fine too.