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Ask HN: Is it viable to use a new job as a means of moving across the US?
Has anyone wanted to move across the US (or another great distance) and did so successfully by switching companies?
Are employers generally open to this?
In particular, I'd be interested Sales Engineering type roles.
- madcaptenor 10y agoI successfully moved from San Francisco to Atlanta this way for a job as a data scientist. I had been targeting Atlanta because San Francisco was too expensive and my wife had personal connections in Atlanta. The big variable here is whether you can get the company to pay for your relocation. Since I was moving to a job in a large company there was already policy on this. Relocation had been budgeted for for the position I was moving into, because they were trying to get a new department started and didn't have local talent. At some point we stopped growing so quickly, though, and they stopped paying for relocation. My relocation expenses were subject to a clawback provision, though, if I had quit within a year. I think this is standard at large companies. If you're planning to move at your own expense, then I don't see how this would be any different from any other job search. However the lead time between offer and start date would probably be longer than for a local candidate; depending on whether the company needs to fill the job Right Now this could be a deal-breaker.
- xcountryjob 10y agoThanks. Exact type of feedback I was looking for. I actually don't have expectations of a relo package, but was more concerned around if companies weigh someone who isn't local less than a local hire, since the entire process might be more of a headache for them. Virtual interviews etc.
- madcaptenor 10y agoI think that really depends on the company. In my company's case it didn't seem to be a problem at all, but we're spread out anyway so people are used to doing things by phone. On the other hand - and this is anecdotal - at one point I was sending resumes to both Bay Area and Atlanta companies while living in San Francisco. This is after I realized that even if I was going to stay in SF, I didn't want to stay in my current job. If memory serves (and sadly that's all I have, because I lost my job-search-tracking spreadsheet) I had a higher hit rate, in terms of the number of times I at least got to a phone interview, for San Francisco than for Atlanta. It's hard to know for sure, but I suspect that some companies in Atlanta took a pass on me, even though I said in my resume and cover letter that I was relocating, simply because they didn't want to deal with that. I don't blame them. One nice thing about this sort of interviewing, by the way, is that I could take advantage of time zones and take a phone interview at, say, 7:30 AM Pacific / 10:30 AM Eastern, and then head to work. (Depending on the time zones in question this may or may not work for you...)