After 6 years at LinkedIn, I’m leaving. My wife and I are going to be moving overseas to Amsterdam in October. I’ll be joining Booking.com in November.

What started as a joke in early 2020, when my wife and I were talking about moving up to San Francisco. We would say, “either SF or Amsterdam” half jokingly. COVID happened, and the more we got stir crazy the less crazy the idea of moving there seemed.

We’ve been to Amsterdam a few times before, it was actually the first big trip we took as a couple. We ended up staying in the village of Ilpendam, 20 minutes outside of Amsterdam. We instantly fell in love with the country.

We had some loaner bikes which we rode to a different city every day; we went to Marken, Monnickendam, and Edam. We took the bus into the city on the weekends to grab dinner. There’s something so striking about being able to take a bus from a idyllic Dutch village and be in the center of Amsterdam in 20 minutes.

For me, adventure was an acquired taste. My wife has always challenged me to get out of my comfort zone and encouraged me to chase after the things that matter. For her, living internationally is no big deal, she spent 5 years in London studying at Goldsmith’s, a path she forged alone.

Moving is a big adventure, even more so when moving across the Atlantic, but it’s an experience I’ve wanted to have for a while now. For us, Amsterdam checks all the boxes:

• Major International City
• Good Flight Availability
• Centrally Located in Europe for Travelling
• Good Tech Job Prospects
• Good Illustration Job Prospects
• Great Culture
• Great Public Infrastructure

Career wise, Booking.com seemed like the next logical step. LinkedIn is all about matching people to jobs, and Booking is all about matching people to great vacations. We love to travel, and being in Europe makes it a lot easier to access some destinations we have on our bucket list.

In the meantime, we’ll be finishing up logistics for our move and spending some time with our Bay Area friends. And if you haven’t noticed, I’ve reworked my website a bit. I’ve renamed the “Journal” section to “Notes”. I’m going to try and write some more frequent updates, Amsterdam move included!

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