Returning to Portugal
A designer’s account of moving back, while keeping his London job.
If you look at my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see my location listed as ‘London, England, United Kingdom’. That’s not entirely true, though it used to be.
In the summer of 2008, fresh out of university, I moved from Portugal to London. I met up with my girlfriend, now my wife, who was already there, finishing up her master’s degree.
We were both young and looking for different opportunities from the ones we had in Portugal. We also wanted to experience living in another country and expand our horizons.
I was after a career as a Designer and after an initial struggle, I finally managed to land my first job. The dream was on!
Life in London was great, our careers were progressing well and we were both generally happy.
In 2014, we had our first child, and things started to take a turn. As the family grew, we started to realise that we were missing out on important things, like being closer to our families. Life in London was suddenly not as interesting as it used to be.
Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic further accelerated our wish to move back to our country of origin, so we crafted a plan.
There are several reasons for it (which will be left for another time), but the plan revolved mostly around us getting remote jobs.
In late 2021 I finally managed to land that remote job, at Else, a company at which I’d worked before and to which I was very pleased to come back. In August 2022 we finally moved to Portugal.
Since moving, our lives changed a lot, mostly for the better, I’d say, but there have been challenges and learnings, as well as benefits.
The challenges
Now, Else is not a remote company. Currently, we operate in a hybrid model, where people are asked to come into our Wapping studio a couple of times a week.
Mondays are usually an ‘in-day’, where the majority of people will be in the studio. I’m not able to do this and this means that I’m usually missing out on a few things.
Here are some of the challenges I’ve faced since moving.
Social and cultural issues
Social interactions with colleagues and having meaningful contributions to the company culture become harder when you’re simply not there.
How am I tackling it: I try to be as ‘virtually present’ as possible, by being active in Slack as well as in our Monday morning meetings and other company meetings. I also try to culturally contribute by writing pieces like this one, for example. I also come to London whenever we have any kind of social or company events, as well as for any important project meetings, if possible.
Generating bonds with new colleagues
Having worked at Else for a long time before, I was lucky that I already knew a lot of the people there, and so I already had a lot of bonds with most of the team. With the new folks, the ones that joined after I left, or are joining now that I’ve returned, it’s a different story as I don’t get to talk to them much unless we happen to be working on the same project.
How am I tackling it: Coming to London (or Valencia, like we did for our annual retreat!) as often as possible has been essential in helping generate those bonds (as well as keeping the pre-existing ones).
The little conversations
A lot of things get settled and agreed upon when you bump into a colleague whilst preparing a cup of coffee. It’s also much easier to just walk over to someone’s desk and have a 2-minute chat about something than having to send them a Slack message to see if they’re available and then have a Slack huddle or Zoom call to have the conversation. All this just adds an extra level of complexity, which makes things a tiny bit harder. And when you have to do that 10, 50, 100 times over the course of whatever time, it adds up.
How am I tackling it: This is a tricky one, as there’s no substitute for these little conversations. My take is to keep the communication channels always open. Everyone that works with me knows that I’m always available. Need to talk to me about something? Let’s jump on a quick huddle. Asked me a question in Slack? I’ll reply as quickly as I can (which is often pretty much straight away).
Zoom fatigue
For some reason having a meeting over Zoom is so much more tiring than having it in person. We’ve all felt it… Zoom fatigue is real.
How am I tackling it: Making my meetings as organised and effective as possible, by making sure everyone knows why they’re there and what the agenda is. But also, at the same time, trying to make them as light and relaxed as possible. Nothing wrong with a little bit of an initial chat about the weather or the occasional joke here and there. Another thing I do is to try and change the place where I sit for these meetings. Sometimes, I’ll be at my desk, sometimes on the living room sofa, or the kitchen table, and sometimes, when the weather is nice, in the garden (people hate me for this one!). It just helps keep things fresh for me and it creates a bit of variety in my day.
The move
Dragging a family of 4 to another country is hard! There is so much to think about, from schools to locations to bank accounts and other legal things, and the list goes on…
On top of that, you can’t drop the ball: you still have to do your job well. It’s a juggling exercise, and it’s tiring!
How am I tackling it: Organisation is key on this one. Lists, spreadsheets, Kanban boards. We basically treated the move like another work project, breaking tasks into smaller tasks and making sure one got completed before dealing with the next. Being able to take time off work when needed (within the realms of possibility, of course) was also important as it allowed me to not only get important and urgent things done but also get some rest when I felt like I was running out of energy.
The Benefits
You can’t talk about moving to Portugal without talking about the weather, of course! And what a difference does it make… The sun, the sea, the warmer temperatures… Ah…
And then, there’s being closer to our families, which was a major factor as to why we wanted to move back.
At the end of the day, it’s just a healthier, happier lifestyle, and that’s what we were after.
Working from home is, for me, a big benefit as well. I’m more productive and more comfortable at home and the time saved in commuting is well spent with my family and doing things that I like.
I also get to travel to London (a city which I still love) every once in a while and see the ol’ Studio and my workmates, which is lovely.
The Learnings
So, it’s been six months since we moved back, but what have I learned in that time?
Well, most of it I already mentioned, but here it goes:
Planning goes a long way
It wasn’t easy, but all the effort we put into planning it and making sure we were as prepared as possible did help a lot. Or at least I imagine how it would’ve been had we not planned things so well, and I can tell you it gives me shivers!
You can’t predict it all
As prepared as you are, you’ll never be able to be prepared for everything. You’ll just have to deal with the curve balls as they come and keep moving forward.
Dragging a family to another country is hard!
I already said this, I know, but man, it is hard work, on all sorts of levels…
Valuing the ‘together moments’
From a work perspective, for a person who is fully remote, it’s very important to value the moments when you are together with the rest of your colleagues and make the most of them. It really helps create and keep those relationships and makes you feel more like part of the team.
Keep those communication lines open
Because you’re not there, keeping the communication lines open is majorly important to guarantee that the work goes smoothly and that important things aren’t overlooked.
It’s possible!
It really is. I’ve done it and so far, so good. No doubt, it’s an ongoing business. We’re still settling and there are a lot of unknowns in the future, both in terms of personal and professional life, but I believe we can make it work.
So, there’s a lot more that could be said about this, but for now, here’s to hoping it’ll keep going well because I really want to stay in this beautiful country!
