This is part two of “So you want to move to another country”. My overview of the process we went through to be able to actually move to London. So far I am still writing the series so not sure how many parts it will eventually come out to. I am finding it very therapeutic to write this all out. Hopefully friends and family enjoy it and anyone on the internet thinking of doing the same thing might find it useful.
Having the ability to work in the EU with MC now being an citizen of an EU country was only the first step. Even though it felt very complex and stressful in and of itself it was likely pretty easy compared to what came next. Let’s face it MC was able to prove her criteria to be a citizen. All she had to do is jump through the hoops to get the paperwork. Finding a job on the other hand was nowhere near as guaranteed.
MC and I both agreed that our most viable option would be if there was an opportunity within my company. Where she worked was very small and niche. The challenge was at the time of those discussions in the summer and fall of 2016 there appeared to be no opportunities in my company availible. MC and I still agreed to move forward with citizenship process anyway since it was something that kind of always wanted to have done anyway.
Opportunity presents itself in the weirdest ways sometimes. At the end of March of this year my group was part of a large reorganization within the greater technical operations group. As part of that reorganization some of the work that was currently part of the group I managed was getting spun off into a new central delivery group. What was left was purely a support organization. I’ve done IT operations support on and off in my career for years. I have done operational support more than anything else however prior to that group I was doing service delivery and I liked it. In my role at the time service delivery was a small part of what i did and I was a little frustrated with it going away. When my boss at the time asked me how I was doing after the announcement of the reorganization we had a long chat. I voice my concerns and he presented an opportunity to lead the group that was being formed out of the people from my current group and my peers groups in the new organization. At first I wasn’t so sure I was interested. It would be a smaller group and doing something different. It was similar to what i had done at a smaller scale in the past and i enjoyed that. Even if support can be tiring I sometimes enjoy the adrenaline of under pressure problem solving. I had mixed thoughts about the opportunity however the more i thought about it the more interesting it became. The final deciding factor was that there seemed to be an opportunity for overseas relocation. In my group at the time i was responsible for Americas. It was very regional and no real overseas opportunities. The new position was managing a global team again. The was a case to be made to do that job from England. My new manager agreed and was interested in seeing if we could make it happen.
At that point it was only an idea but it sounded promising. Due to some other re-org related dependencies I had to stay quiet about my job move until late April / early May. Once that change was announced i started in my new position. I also started working with my new manager to make the business case to his management about my move. His manager seemed opened to the idea and wanted to see it written up. Once that eventually got approved it had to go one level higher for approval. During that time there was debate over where to send me. London was an option that i assumed I would goto, however there was another site in England that was an option too. MC and I would have been happy with either. During the summer it seemed like this decision was more we are going but not sure where yet however nothing was in writing. In August i got word that everything was approved for London. The next part of the move was to have our Mobility and HR groups get involved. it wasn’t until early September before i got the details of the offer. It was another week or two before I had paperwork to sign. It is one thing to know something is happening and it is another to actually have something to sign. The entire process from hearing it was a possibility to do in March to having signed papers in September was almost 6 months. It was totally worth it however as they say the waiting is the hardest part.
When this originally started looking like it was a possibility we were targeting a move at the end of 2017 or early 2018. Even with things feeling like it took a long time it turned out that my finger in the air guess on when we could move would actually come true.
In Part 3 of this saga I will describe the process of actually selling our apartment…
