During the pandemic, it was easy for Yeona to wish she were living outside of the US — in a country that knew how to handle the mess that it kept building. In particular, she really wanted to move to Korea. It had been 20 years since her last visit, and 5 years since she gave up her birthright citizenship for a US one. But with Trump as the president again, and the country on the brink of a political civil war, it was time for her to make a decision. She's only 25, and yet it feels like her youth is slipping away in this godforsaken country that managed to vote this incompetence back for a second term.

Yeona was working at a small start up at the time. The life of a software engineer is stable with a higher income and all of the benefits. But she knew that the best benefit of being a software engineer was the flexibility to be able to choose where she wanted to be — so long as she could get a job. As long as she got a job, Yeona won't need to worry about anything else — living costs, financial support, relocation costs. So she often thought to herself, what am I staying here for? Stock options that I would get either way at another tech company? The money, that I would still be earning at another tech company? Or the experience, which is practically universally valid, no matter which company you gain it at?

Yeona was staying because she was nervous, and not taking the leap of faith. Money is money, but happiness is priceless. It was time to get a move on.

Once she made up my mind that she wanted to go to Korea, and figured out that getting an F4 visa was close to no work for a person who had been born in Korea, Yeona began recruiting again. It's been a while since she last recruited, since this was her first job out of uni. But to be fair, with almost 2 years of experience, not including internships, under her belt, in addition to having dealt with so many technologies while here, Yeona was confident in her ability to get a job where I wanted — Google. (Let's not forget to mention that her sister worked at the HQ and would be able to get her that sexy referral).

Three weeks of interviewing go by, and she had the offer in her hands. (Okay, in her email). It's really happening, she thought to herself. Yeona's parents huffed and puffed at her desire to uproot herself from the very country they had established her family in, just to return to the country that they had left, but they knew that with a job at Google, she could return to the US easily, just by switching teams and offices. All she need is to get that visa, pack up, and to move to Seoul.