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Thank you very much for the very detailed and informative post! If you don't mind sharing - was it easy to convince your employer to get a transfer to the US?

Thank you very much for the very detailed and informative post! If you don't mind sharing - was it easy to convince your employer to get a transfer to the US? - Moving to a country where English is the native language is a _lot_ easier than moving to a country where you don't know the language as well. This holds even if a large part of the population speaks English very well; if you don't speak native language of a country, it's hard to feel like a part of society. -> I had to learn this the very hard way here in Sweden. Even though I come from another Nordic country, I guess I have an annoying or very noticeable accent which makes socializing extremely hard.

throwaway_13490 5y ago
Only speaking for my case; I told my manager I no longer liked living in Sweden and wanted to move to a different country. At the time, we only had engineering offices in Sweden and the US. That meant either 1) asking to be an exception in remote work, which HR didn't really like, 2) leaving my company or 3) my company helping me move to the US. I never saw it as a negotiation/threat of leaving, I just honestly told him that I never really connected with Sweden and that I wanted to move. I think he understood that, as we had quite a few expats and a lot of them leave after a few years to go back to their home country. Fortunately on his part, he was very supportive and helped me connect to several teams in the US to see if we'd be a good match professionally. I'd say it was easier than asking for a raise, hehe... It is relatively easy to move to the US if you've been at your company for 1+ years, have a good education background and if your company has a "blanket L1 visa petition". My "Im-not-a-lawyer" summary of L1 blanket visa is that it allows a company to move special knowledge workers to the US with a simplified and fairly certain path to get a visa (vs. H1B which is a lottery, O1 has hard requirements, etc.). The downside of an L1 is that it's tied to your employment at your sponsoring company, so you can't move to the US and then switch employer (... unless you first switch to H1B/greencard, etc...).

throwaway_13490 5y ago

Only speaking for my case; I told my manager I no longer liked living in Sweden and wanted to move to a different country. At the time, we only had engineering offices in Sweden and the US. That meant either 1) asking to be an exception in remote work, which HR didn't really like, 2) leaving my company or 3) my company helping me move to the US. I never saw it as a negotiation/threat of leaving, I just honestly told him that I never really connected with Sweden and that I wanted to move. I think he understood that, as we had quite a few expats and a lot of them leave after a few years to go back to their home country. Fortunately on his part, he was very supportive and helped me connect to several teams in the US to see if we'd be a good match professionally. I'd say it was easier than asking for a raise, hehe... It is relatively easy to move to the US if you've been at your company for 1+ years, have a good education background and if your company has a "blanket L1 visa petition". My "Im-not-a-lawyer" summary of L1 blanket visa is that it allows a company to move special knowledge workers to the US with a simplified and fairly certain path to get a visa (vs. H1B which is a lottery, O1 has hard requirements, etc.). The downside of an L1 is that it's tied to your employment at your sponsoring company, so you can't move to the US and then switch employer (... unless you first switch to H1B/greencard, etc...).