I have informed colleagues and close external collaborators already, but today it’s finally time to make it public: as of now I am officially working out of Meta’s Dublin office1, and am no longer based in the US.

Why Ireland?

Some reasons I am happy to disclose publicly; for the rest, feel free to ask me to regale you in person, if we know each other; preferably over a beer or something stronger.

We’ve always been interested in exploring Europe, but long flights are hard on our little kid; the work-life balance in Europe is also more appealing than US work culture (though I must say my team is better than most. But still, I do get extra vacation days simply by being based in an EU country…)

Not having to worry too much about saving for college is also really nice.

Work-wise, though, this means my team has people in my role (Production Engineer - roughly a hybrid software engineering / site reliability engineering role) in both North American and European time zones, which should improve overlap with both internal and external partner teams and organizations.

We could have moved to the UK instead; Ireland has a housing crisis after all. To their credit though, the country at least admits it has a problem, whether it can solve it or not. London feels even more unaffordable (unless you trade in a long commute) and we have mostly been living in high-cost-of-living areas of the US. We are definitely lucky and privileged to be able to afford it, and hopefully we won’t contribute too much to worsening the housing situation - but on balance, being in the EU, living in a smaller city, and having more stable politics wins out over being in a more exciting city and being paid slightly more.

What’s next?

Nothing much changes, except I will be more judicious in attending US-based meetings that take place late in the evening in Europe, at least at the beginning while we are still busy settling down.

I expect to still make All Systems Go in late September, but will probably curtail travel for the rest of the year until we are properly settled. Next year I expect to make more European conferences and reduce travel to North America (especially the US) as much as possible - after all, that’s partly why I relocate here.

Looking forward to being able to make FrOSCon and Kernel Recipes next year! And probably even a future GUADEC and DebConf.

This post is day 30 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Visit https://100daystooffload.com to get more info, or to get involved.

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  1. due to tight timing, and out of our immigration consultant’s abundance of caution, I am finishing a work visit to the London office at the moment and will be spending a few more days decompressing before actually flying to Dublin ↩︎