Coming to America

In July of 2017, I wrote an article on my ten years in the Insurance industry (so far!). The article chronicled my story of joining the processing department of FM Global, a little known insurance company. It went on to describe my experiences on the way to the position of Underwriter in our Windsor, UK office.

The end of the article described my excitement for what the next ten years had in store….I should have looked more short-term.

I now sit here writing my second article as a Product Owner, based in our corporate headquarters in Rhode Island, USA.

I assume you have questions!! How did I land this amazing opportunity? How is the visa process? How is the moving process? What’s it like to live in another country? Any regrets? What the hell is a Product Owner? These are all great questions, which I will attempt to answer over the next few paragraphs!

My ‘Decade in Insurance’ article mentioned my passion for travel, technology and adapting to change. Well, the offer of a Product Owner position checked all of these boxes. In the summer of 2018, I received a phone call out of the blue from a colleague in home office. The colleague spoke about the exciting things going on in our new Agile department. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more.

Agile principles are a well-known way of working in the area of software development, but can be applied to almost any industry. At it’s essence, it is the process of breaking large projects, initiatives or tasks in to manageable chunks. The chunks are released to customers/users as and when they are completed, rather than waiting until the entire project is completed. The benefits of this are that the customer can begin to get value from the ‘product’ earlier and also provide feedback on the product, helping to shape the ‘chunks’ still to come.

For example, In the ‘old’ way of producing an internal facing business application, there would be a lot of research and requirements gathering up front. A long design, development and testing phase would follow, before finally releasing to the customer. Unfortunately, more often than not, the product was already obsolete by the time it was finally in the hands of the customer.

With Agile, a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is quickly delivered to the customer. This MVP is designed to provide some immediate value to the user, but is not the final product. Think of it as providing a skateboard to get someone moving while the car is being built! As the customer is involved as the product evolves, they help to shape the product, reducing the risk of delivering an obsolete product at the end of the process!

So my caller from the blue told me about the ‘Product Owner’ position and encouraged me to apply. The job description was like nothing I’d ever heard before, but thankfully, it required a lot of the experience that I possessed. It was exciting, technological, challenging….not to mention it was in another country! I decided to apply.

So what is a Product Owner? That’s a great question and you’ll probably get a different answer depending on who you ask. I like to describe it as follows:

No doubt you have a smart phone? That smart phone will be filled with Applications or ‘Apps’. You will have noticed that almost daily, your Apps receive updates. These updates bring new features, better performance, bug fixes and security patches. That’s because there is a whole team of people responsible for maintaining that application throughout it’s life.

That team will be made up of software developers, software engineers, quality assurance specialists, designers, business analysts and a few more. Leading this team, is the Product Owner. You’re welcome! ??

Within six weeks of applying, I had the call offering me the position. A truly surreal and wonderful moment. With so many positives, there were also some downsides to consider. I would be moving away from my family, my friends, my colleagues and my football teams (I’ve played Saturday and Sunday football for 20 years!).

So, with moving to a new country, there are a number of things to consider. The number one priority is obtaining a working visa. You need to obviously ‘close down’ your British life – selling cars, houses, possessions, phone contracts, utilities, sky subscriptions etc. You need to get your taxes in order for both the country you’re exiting and the destination country.

Luckily, my relocation package provided a lot of help in the above aspects. I was also lucky in the respect that I had no children and wasn’t a homeowner. There was even an option to have my car transported over to the US….although I didn’t fancy my Scirocco’ s chances in the famed New England winters!

Other than the goodbyes, the hardest part of the relocation was certainly the visa. I think the political climate at the time of applying didn’t help, but the process was long, drawn out and tiring. I recommend thorough preparation and an understanding of what to expect. After accepting a job that began on 1st December, I didn’t actually begin work in the USA for another six months! The enforced delay was less than ideal, as I had already sold my car and moved out of my apartment! But hey, that’s what in-laws are for, no? ??

This introduced me to another new experience. No, not living with my in-laws….remote, international working! Being five hours ahead of the US meant that my day consisted of catching up on emails from the previous American afternoon, before sharing 4-5 hours on Skype calls and video conferences with my teams in home office. Although ‘internationally remote’ can be made to work, the real magic of Agile is working in close proximity to your team, collaborating and conversing throughout the day!

The job was extremely enjoyable from ‘across the pond’ and so I was excited to finally get out there and meet my team. First off, I needed to find a place to live. I had some temporary accommodation while I searched for a more permanent residence. I can not speak highly enough of serviced apartments….although the food delivery services always seem to struggle finding them! ??

My temporary apartment was amazing and included a gym, swimming pool, Jacuzzi, coffee room, theatre and concierge. It was like living in a hotel! It was tough to move, but I had a fun time searching for my permanent home. 

I ‘settled’ on a wonderful new apartment complex in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, the state capital. There’s no pool…but you can’t have everything! ?? I have a wonderful view of the Rhode Island state house, a stunning piece of architecture which appears to have no place in the smallest state of America (it’s self-supporting dome is only surpassed in size by St Peter’s Basilica, the Taj Mahal and Minnesota’s state house!). Providence has an abundance of restaurants (famed for it’s Italian selection up on Federal Hill) and has a number of high ranking colleges, including the Ivy League Brown University.

It’s a real up and coming city with a mixture of fantastic old architecture and new construction projects all around. Boston is a 40 minute drive and New York just 3 hours. There is also the seaside town of Newport just 30 mins away. Newport is the original summer house destination for the super-rich of the gilded age. I recommend the ‘cliff walk’ if you’re ever in the vicinity! For our anniversary, we took a 2.5 hour flight to Disneyworld. This was my first time to the ‘House of Mouse’ and I will certainly go again! In summary, Providence is a great launch pad for an American adventure. A quick top-five list of activities I have undertaken would be something like:

1. Christmas trip to New York City

2. Drive up to Portland, Maine

3. See the Red Sox vs Yankees at Fenway

4. Boat trip to Newport

5. Trip to Plymouth Rock

Providence also prides itself on being somewhat of an innovation hub. It helps when the ‘expensive’ city of Boston is just an hour’s train journey away. All of those MIT and Harvard grads have no problem relocating! Providence contains self-driving electric cars that can pick you up from the train station and drop you along their route. There’s electric scooters dotted around the city to whiz you quickly and efficiently to your destination. It was also the first city in America to have a fully automated sorting office!

And it is ‘innovation’ that best captures my daily life. I live in an innovative city and every day I work in the most innovative department of my company. We work hard each day to improve the experiences of the users of our application and are constantly thinking of new ways to push their efficiency, effectiveness and enjoyment even further. I collaborate each day with amazing colleagues, who’s technical knowledge astounds me. It’s a real delight to learn from these people.

As I edge closer to my one year anniversary of ‘Coming to America’, I look back with no regrets. Myself and my wife have had a wonderful time both outside and at work. It’s been a whirlwind year, full of learning, exploring, challenges, surprises, victories and the occasional defeat (the motto of Agile is to ‘fail fast’!). We’ve even had the occasional visitor to share our new lives with.

If you’re reading this and thinking of what it would be like to live and work abroad, I say to you ‘DO IT!’. You have absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain!