Career Story
Moving to Amsterdam (Part 01/02)
A story of goodbye(s), hello(s), and everything in between
There are no quick way to explain this, but in short: I quit my previous job as a Design Manager in an Indonesian OTA company and took a job as a Sr. Product Designer in Amsterdam. It took me a lot of guts and courage to be able to say yes and to eventually do it. Overall, it was 5 months of blood, sweet, and tears (but minus the blood).
In this article, I’m going to break down the whole process from pre-interview, interview, offering, resigning, relocating, moving day, and starting a new life. The first four main topics will be covered in part 01, and the rest will be on part 02.
- Finding a new job
For context, I had quite a stable job in a loving environment. Challenging, but enjoyable. But still after a good 3 years of developing features and products, I felt a need of a fresh start somewhere else. I missed those days feeling stupid every day, because that gave me the urge to learn every day. That being said, I started by listing down the criteria of a job that I want. I mean, what’s the point of moving to a company where you’ll regret later? I wanted to be certain, so I came up with these 5 most crucial criteria:
- Diverse & multinational environment
- Salary rise
- Work flexibility
- Heavy on data &…
