Welcome

Hi, my name is Michael and I am an iOS software engineer from Germany. In March 2018 I got hired by a company based in the heart of Silicon Valley and in January 2019 I will relocate there.

In this blog I want to write about my experiences, information that I found useful when planning my relocation and especially about all the things I found out about later and wished I’d known earlier. My hope is that other people in a similar situation find the information on this blog useful and can benefit from it.

If you are not relocating here but already live here I am more than eager to hear your tips and thoughts on the topics I blog about. If you do not live here but love California just as much as I do, I hope you still find this blog entertaining and interesting to read.

I will not talk about anything specific to my employer but instead write about the broader picture and all the things you need to deal with no matter what company you got hired by.

I am starting this blog in November 2018. By now a lot has happened and some things are already much clearer than when I first researched this topic. To give everyone a better understanding of what has happened so far, I will start this blog with a series of posts about the beginning of 2018, in chronological order.