Responses

Over the last couple of days there has been a lot of e-mail traffic within my company about my situation. My internal resume has made its way to a partner in Frankfurt that is part of the practice that I specialize in within my company. She wants to interview me this week to discuss the options.

There are a number of ways I could go about working in Germany with my company. One constant for all of us globally is the high probability of travel for our job. We work on projects that can last anywhere from a week to years and may be located anywhere in the world. We also have a fairly flexible management that tries to accommodate changing life needs when market conditions allow it.

Originally I had hoped that we could find a project where I could be near M. in Munich but still be based out of the Boston office. So I would travel from Boston to Munich for the new project. This would hold my company accountable for return trips home to the US on a regular basis, about once every two months. It would also be more of a temporary situation, where I could try living and working in Europe but still had the option to return home easily if things didn't work out.

Another option would be to transfer to our Munich office and use that as my new home base. I could then find a project anywhere in Europe that I would travel to every week, similar to what I do now being based out of Boston and traveling to Washington DC every week. The advantage to transferring is that it would open a much wider area and therefore more projects where I could find a good role. My company would be responsible for paying for me to go back and forth to Munich every weekend so if I don't find a role in Munich M. and I wouldn't have to figure out how to fund meeting up every weekend. The disadvantages are that living out of Munich would come out of my pocket instead of my company's, there wouldn't be trips back to the US and if I want to go back I would have to try to reverse the process, which wouldn't be guaranteed.

So, all that being said I am glad that I have at least been granted an interview to discuss the options and see if we can make something work. Things have moved a lot faster in the beginning than I expected (we only started this week) and the partner on my project who is helping isn't even someone I considered in all the brainstorming we did, so we still have all those options too. I'm hoping that this interview goes well!

On another note, the parents aren't taking it all that well. As much as I care what their opinion is I also think that as an adult I need to do what I think is right for me. It would be nice if things were less complicated but this is the situation that has presented itself and building a future with M. is what I want. Hopefully in time I will have their support but I'm prepared to go forward with or without it.