Two days after I set foot in Europe for the first time, I attended an all employee meeting via conference call from my hotel in Utrecht, Netherlands. My probably stupid and brave, but heavily researched decision to move to this country site unseen happened just a few months prior when I signed a contract with an international consulting firm. They moved me to Europe. I got a raise in a stronger currency, and enjoyed the benefits of being a highly skilled migrant, of which there are many. So began my very promising adventure across the pond.
Then at that first all employee meeting, management announced that there was an acquisition. The company in which I entrusted my livelihood was acquired by a bigger, more established firm in NL that also had offices in London. As they say in the corporate world, I was "the last one in, and the first one out." By Dutch law, they actually don't have to supply you with a reason to let a person go during the probationary period, and they quoted exactly that line and verse from their legal code on the afternoon of my termination.
At first that day felt like a TKO. I was on the mat, bleeding and busted, unsure if I could get up and go on. I felt completely derailed and filled with self-doubt, but mostly I was afraid. It took me months to research and plan my move to Europe. If I had to return hastily to the U.S., I knew I would lose big.
I spent one entire day in full on panic mode. Then the next day I got to work. According to the IND (the Dutch immigration office), I had 90 days to find a suitable replacement for my employer, after which the opportunity to remain in this country would become exponentially more difficult and costly. The clock was already running against me.
What happened next will shock some of you, but I assure you that it is completely normal in my field, and particularly so in development hot spots like Amsterdam and Berlin and San Francisco, where there are not enough people who do what I do. What I am referring to is getting overnight feedback, and interviews set up for that very same week that I was let go from my previous job.
For the last 75 days I worked with both internal and external recruiters and have honestly lost track of all of the interviews of which I have been a part. Whether over Skype or in person, technical and non, formal or informal, I have done them all. I also developed a few single page apps in Angular, wrote jQuery widgets, and did a whole array of different coding assignments. From big corporations to budding start-ups, I met with them all. Suffice it to say, I picked a very good city to live in for my vocation, albeit challenging.
Just try to imagine - I spent 75 days of not knowing where I would be in six months. 75 days of flying blind. 75 days of worrying that I would throw thousands of dollars into a black hole just to get myself home, of recovering almost instantly from rejection, of selling myself confidently when inside I was completely freaked out. 75 days in a foreign country with no escape plan.
It was a long strange trip. I did hear a lot of rejection, which was thankfully often coupled with valuable feedback. However, valuable though it was, I usually had to work to decipher it without becoming personally offended. One of the prime examples was realizing that the American tradition of keeping your resume short will not impress foreign hiring officials. They want to see everything you have ever done, in which case the more senior members of the field have many pages of experience.
Generally speaking, I got a lot of attention, and a lot of interviews, but getting to the offer stage was not a simple feat. The more iterations I repeated, the closer I got to the closing table. Then finally, one offer came, and then another, and then two more, but even then it wasn't over. The first company that made me a competitive offer ultimately did not end up signing me after I made a counter offer. That was a crippling blow. That was two weeks ago, and these last two offers came at the end of that same week that the first deal went south.
Ultimately, all of my hard work is going to be justly awarded. This week I finally signed with a new firm, and I am currently trying to relish in the slowly resonating tone of relief as it echos through all previous areas of unrest. I start back to work on Tuesday, and right now I am trying to give myself the latitude to do exactly what my life and my body need with this last weekend of freedom. Today is the second day since I signed the contract, and what I am finding is that I am completely fucking exhausted. I think I could sleep straight through the next few days if I let myself. That seems a bit extreme to me, so I have elected to compromise by keeping it close to home, trying to get some chores and errands done, while balancing that with watching films and spending time with my pets.
So that's what I've been doing.
