Ask HN: Making a non-traditional move? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Making a non-traditional move?

3 pointsgedc3 comments

I'm considering something and I don't really know how to go about it, or if it's realistic, so I thought I'd ask this group.

I'm in the US with a large financial services company, and I'm somewhat senior. I focus on delivery of technology, focused on data, analytics and efficiency. Before this, my Director-level role was in data engineering management, mostly on financial systems. It's been a while since I've been an individual contributor, but I'm still a pretty solid data hacker, thanks mostly to side projects. I'd say data engineer, but you folks have a bit of refinement that I probably lack :D

Anyhow, I'm looking to do something stupid. I want to move to Italy or Italian Switzerland, since I (and therefore my children) are dual citizens and I want them to pick up the language while they're young. I speak Italian, but they're not going to get fluent from 3 hours a night with me.

I know that doing what I do now remotely is most likely the best option, but I haven't had that conversation yet, and if the answer is "no" I want to open myself to other options. So I suppose what I need to figure out is how far of a step down is still "credible" when applying? I highly doubt anyone is going to bring me over as a lateral and I'm totally fine with that, but if that assumption holds, what types of roles should I be looking for? I certainly want to bring the benefit of my leadership experience, but I'd also be more than a little excited to be "doing" again.

Has anyone done this? I'm okay to step down in level given that I want to do this for non-career reasons, but is that something anyone is going to consider, or are they going to wonder why some goofball is applying from 4000 miles away for something "lower" than their current level? Should I just focus on something remote?

There's a lot of things to address here.

First, I don't think wanting to move to Italy or Switzerland, especially because it's for your children's benefit, is a stupid thing. I wish my parents had broadened my horizons like that when I was younger.

When I made the move to working remote, I was in a position managing a team of about 6-8 developers. But I was also still spending about 25% of my time coding. To go remote, my manager thought it would be best if I cut the managerial responsibilities but still have "unofficial" leadership responsibilities as a Tech Lead.

Fast forward about 9 months or so and I would say my responsibilities are largely the same as when I was managing a team. I essentially still am managing a team (although not in title). And my manager is definitely comfortable with my moving into pure management remotely if I want to.

This is all to say that you might be surprised with how much of the leadership role you're still able to do remotely.

I would absolutely first have the conversation with your current company about seeing if you can keep your current role and just do it remotely. Not sure how long you want to be in Europe but you might consider timeboxing the remote thing so that your company - if they have any reservations - don't feel like you're making a permanent change.

Also, if you do have to go back to a more individual contributor role, you can probably still maintain some leadership responsibilities, especially if it's with your current company.

If you have to look at jobs elsewhere, focusing on finding something remote will certainly give you more freedom and I'm not sure how easy it is to apply for (on-site) jobs overseas as I've never done that before. Remote companies are usually smaller and therefore their employees wear more hats, so someone with more senior leadership level experience applying for more hands-on roles will probably (my best guess at least) not raise as many eyebrows.

Thanks! Your experience there is very encouraging.

Lots of moving parts, but when I was thinking about this, I arrived at a similar conclusion to what you recommend - have the conversation with my current employer, and also to timebox it. The latter part works because I'm nearly certain my wife doesn't want to be gone for more than a year or two. We'll see on the former. School's already started for the year, so I'm thinking I can have this conversation with plenty of lead time and do the relocation next summer.

Could I ask the time difference that you were working with, and if it was a particular challenge? I'd be 6 hours ahead of eastern time and I'm not sure yet whether I would want to commit to working EST from abroad - it's certainly doable, but I'm not sure that I want to work until 10-11pm each night.

I'm one hour behind my team so it's pretty easy.

We do have some offshore contractors who work from India which is about 10 hours difference I think. We only have about 2-3 hours overlap with them in the morning, but I find that more than adequate for communication between us.

Working that late doesn't sound enjoyable - you could try proposing 'core hours' that would overlap with EST so you wouldn't have to work that late. Something like 4 hours overlap is what I usually see remote companies requiring.

Best of luck and let me know how it goes, hope it works out for you. Working remotely is great.

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