4 ms·

Ask HN: Relocation gotchas? What am I most probably missing?

6 points by darklajid 16y ago

Hi HN. I'm mostly a lurker here, addicted but really just watching and learning. I'd like to ask about your opinion/help for the following: My day-job (C#/.Net mostly) offers a relocation to a place with nice beaches, awesome food and a weather that rarely/~never~ drops below 10 degrees C (for the US guys: 50F). The problem? I'm rather disconnected from the 'serious' part of the world and never cared about tax reductions, social benefits, retirement funds or really any planning at all. Scheduling to move a couple of thousand km (or - miles) is like a wake-up call for me and I'm sure that I'm missing a lot of things right now that didn't make it on my hastily written list of "check this first" notes. Given that lots of people on this board might've been in a similar position (relocation for a new job/position), would you share your story? What did you miss? What was your focus before you moved out to another country? What IS going to bite me? Some more info: I'll be leaving the EU, target is not the US. The move is inside of my current company (changing role). Thanks for your help.

us 16y ago
I've relocated around the US many times but never outside of the US so take that however you will. I don't really think much about all the variables. I just moved. I felt the new location was always better for my growth and business and at the time I made the decision, that was all that mattered. Everything else, culture, friends, etc... would fall into place on it's own. Of course everyone is different and their situation is different. Without knowing much more than what you've provided and not knowing you personally, I can say I can personally recommend more or less to your checklist other than to have you ask yourself, do you like the idea of this move, do you feel this is good for your career, and is it something you want to experience. If the answer is more yes than no, you can always give it a try and if things don't work out, ask in advance before the move if you could ever go back.
- darklajid 16y ago
  Thanks a lot for that answer. I guess moving inside of the US (albeit between states) is still not that bad: Same language, same currency, roughly the same laws etc.. I would do that in an instant. Sure, it might disrupt the social life, but good connections are going to stay or they weren't worth the investment in the first place. Can I get back? Sure. But the offer contains a binding clause (and that makes sense, of course, for the company) that says that I need to be there 1-2 years minimum (contract is still in flux). Not that this is a lot..
Mz 16y ago
I'm a former military wife, so I've moved around some. The biggest "gotcha" I ran into: An American couple cannot file for divorce while living in Germany. We could have gotten legally separated and I could have flown back home with the baby (our first, we had a second child before leaving Germany) to stay with family and waited for him to return to the US. We opted to stay together rather than go through that. It took a long time for us to finally divorce (that infant son turned 18 a few weeks after his dad actually physically moved out) but we likely would have divorced much sooner had it not been for this snag. The other thing that has been a big deal to me personally is how different the food is wherever you go. When we lived in Washington (state), there was an abundance of fresh fruit and veggies year round. I began eating fresh pineapple, a fruit I never liked when all I had known was the canned variety, and my kids began turning their noses up at frozen corn on the cob. Only fresh corn on the cob would do. Fortunately, they didn't mind shucking it so I didn't feel that was a big issue. In Southern California (on an isolated military base not far from Death Valley) and Germany, good, fresh meat and produce was much harder to come by. I shopped daily to get the freshest items and typically bought whatever cut of meat I was going to cook that night earlier that afternoon. On the other hand, Germany had wonderful plain yogurt and ricotta cheese. Both of those are typically sour and unappealing in stores across the entire U.S. I have at times fantasized about starting a business to provide plain yogurt and ricotta cheese of that quality in the US -- or, alternately, making my own at home for my own consumption (which is probably a much more realistic goal for me). When I visited Port Aransas, Texas for a week or so, I thought I was going to starve to death. I am allergic to shell fish and don't tolerate fish well. Lots of sea food there and basically no "middle class" eateries. Everything was either a dive or very expensive and upscale. I really, really liked Port Aransas and kind of wanted to relocate there. My sons were totally against it for various reasons and I eventually had to agree with them based on the fact that I had such a hard time keeping myself adequately fed. (They have a grocery store, which is unusual for a town that small, but it was also pretty pathetic and didn't do a good enough job to compensate for the lack of restaurants adequate to my needs.) I also went to Southern California to school for 8 weeks. I ended up on boatloads of medication that it took me about two years to get off of. My respiratory problems and their air quality problems were a very bad combo. On the upside, I had never been able to talk any doctors into giving me good drugs like that when I was bedridden (ie much sicker than when I was in school). All those drugs helped save my life. So I can't say I exactly regret it.
notahacker 16y ago
The main social benefit you're probably going to miss outside the EU is subsidised healthcare. You can probably get help from your company with health insurance. Likewise they probably should be able to advise on tax issues (chances are that taxes will be lower than in Germany). I had the good fortune to be offered a rather shorter overseas stint (~3 months) with my company and they paid all these costs for me; with a permanent relocation they may or may not be inclined to cover the costs but certainly ought to be able to offer advice if they already have a presence in your destination country. The other, possibly bigger question is who you're going to socialise with. This can actually be easier in a foreign country than moving to another part of Germany - other people are more likely to find the new German guy interesting and more likely to want to help. It is worth finding out if the locals outside your company are generally regarded as foreigner-friendly and reasonably competent in English or German. If not, are there plenty of expats to keep you company? Are there significant cultural differences (especially noting the number of fairly conservative Muslim countries ~2000km from Germany), and would they matter to you?
- darklajid 16y ago
  Thanks a lot for the answer. I already looked a bit into healthcare and taxes. The former should by now be covered (was a bit of a hassle exactly _because_ even my employer didn't know if they need to take care of my healthcare, plus I'm getting married in the next weeks and need to take care of my SO then). The latter are lower, but actually not that much (much to my dismay..). Socializing: Both my future wife and I plan to learn the language (if possible..). The culture is mostly friendly, depending on the place you're at in that country. And it's about as far away from a conservative Muslim country as possible. ;-) Now how's that for a spoiler? I think what I'm worried about most are the small everyday things. Working all day and still socializing (not only with your coworkers, please). Finding a sweet spot to chill on weekends, if you cannot read signs and don't speak the language..

darklajid 16y ago
Thank you for this detailed report. I hope I don't offend by interpreting here: So you "moved along" initially to the place where your husband was assigned for duty? The reason I ask is that I'm going to marry before the relocation (and in less than a month..) and obviously we're moving together. One of the biggest problems to date is: How can I make sure that she's happy over there? She's an outgoing person (unlike me) and probably can make contacts soonish enough, but without a plan of some sorts about the purpose in that new environment I'm afraid that she'll regret the whole thing after a while. For me it's easier: While I don't have connections over there, I do know most of my coworkers already and have a job during the day that gives me a purpose and (hopefully) the feeling of belonging there. Can you tell me what you liked/disliked? Still assuming (maybe utterly wrong) that you were in the same situation, having at first no job/position/plan what to do.
- Mz 16y ago
  Your assumption is correct: I was basically a homemaker my entire marriage. I lived in the same house from age 3 until I got married. Moving to a new place the first time was a big shock for me. Unfortunately, my husband was not at all helpful or supportive even though he had moved around quite a lot as a kid. We got married, then he joined the army and after he got out of basic training, we moved about 900 miles away to a new place. So this was really the first time either of us had been away from our parents. He promptly began behaving like a lot of first-year college students who are away from their parents for the first time: He was self-indulgent, selfish and irresponsible. Then I turned up pregnant shortly after we got there. I was very sick with my first pregnancy. And we had serious financial problems, in part because we bought an expensive vehicle while he was in basic training with the idea that we would both have jobs and no kids for a few years. This was a big, big mistake that dogged us the rest of our marriage. We had chronic financial problems that we never did resolve, in part due to that initial decision and in part because he really didn't learn from that mistake and in some sense repeated it (over my objections) with our second vehicle (while convincing himself we were on the same page because I eventually threw my hands up and stopped fighting with him over it). I liked getting to see the world on terms that made sense for me. I am unable to wrap my brain around why people go on "vacations" (short visits somewhere to do something I find utterly meaningless like lay on the beach) but I really liked living in different places for a couple of years or so at a time, in part because you get to know the area in a way that you can't possibly learn in just a week or two -- the local customs, pronunciations, differences in so many things like shopping and food and climate and why the architecture is so different. Nonetheless, we would start our "to-do-and-see" list as soon as we knew where we were going and we lived like perpetual tourists. (Many military families don't start doing the tourist-y stuff until they have orders to leave and suddenly realize they might not ever see the place again.) We pretty much used every long weekend or other time off to go sight-seeing at local stuff (until my health crisis put a stop to that). Regardless of how far down the list we got, we were usually pretty content with how much we had done by the time we left again. My kids saw so many zoos, aquariums, etc that when we took them to an aquarium in San Francisco, they were quick to announce it was "lame" and "boring" and ask "can we go yet??" This in spite of our chronic financial problems and basically living on one income the entire time. One really good thing: I had real privacy in my marriage and my kids found stereotypical ugly in-law jokes baffling. They just couldn't relate because we didn't live near any of our relatives. Having real privacy was a tremendous help to a chronically troubled marriage. It is part of why the marriage lasted as long as it did and part of why the divorce was extremely amicable. I have relatives who had attempts on their lives while divorcing so my amicable divorce is quite the novelty for my extended family. One relative, who was nearly killed during their divorce, told me bluntly that I was a fool to trust my ex to the degree that I did. So there is no doubt in my mind that had we not been far away from relatives and had we not had real privacy for our marriage, things would have been much, much, much uglier, both during the marriage and during the divorce. My first conversation with my ex husband when we were 16 years old was an argument. We never did stop arguing, even though years later he admitted to me he picked that first argument as a means to talk to a pretty girl. He was very bad about not being able to let go of an argument and would follow me around and harangue me, while I tried to walk away and give us both a cooling off period. At some point during the divorce I finally said in exasperation "The only time I have your undivided attention is the one time I desperately wish you would go back to ignoring me like you usually do." After that he was finally able to just walk away. The fact that the only time he really gave me his attention was while arguing with me was extremely corrosive to the marriage. Over time, there just stopped being any positive experiences in the marriage. When we would agree to set aside time for each other, he always felt compelled to fill that time with household chores and errands. So he still was unable to actually pay attention to me, even during times that we had agreed to block out as "together time". We also couldn't get on the same page financially and he was extraordinarily poor at making me feel loved. (I have at times said that I got pretty much everything I wanted out of my marriage except a feeling of being loved.) These problems would have destroyed the marriage no matter where we lived. The fact that I got to go to new and interesting places was one of the good things about the marriage, not one of the bad things. When he got orders for Southern California, he tried desperately to get out of it. He told me "There is nothing there. You will divorce me." I eventually told him to stop fighting it and just accept the assignment, that it would be fine. It turned out to be one of the most cherished places we lived, for all four of us. He even tried to extend his assignment so we could stay longer. That request was not granted. Just be a good husband. You can do that any place. And being a bad husband will ruin your marriage no matter where you live. Peace and good luck.