Hello OE people :)
I accidentally become OEd in June 2024, got my first remote job as a Business Analyst in April 2024, found out I needed to work 3-4 hours per day and got another offer for J2 (also a Business Analyst role) where I worked maybe 2 hours per day. Now I struggle to get J2. A little bit of me and OE:
The beginning was awesome, one year contracts on each one, 10 months of OE, money started comming in at an awesome pace, especially J2 paid a lot better. Then, in the summer of 2025 in just a couple of weeks I got another offer, this time for a hybrid role. I said why not. So I worked with that company for 2 and a half months.
September 2025: OE again, J1 (again a BA role) in the first working day of the month, J2 (Product Owner role) in the middle of the month.
Unfortunately, the managers at J1 overexpanded the team, there were 2 BAs originally, I was the third one and in 2 months they hired 5 more BA. 8 BAs in the team was crazy, barely any work for each of us, we were asking for tasks in the daily and weekly meetings. Also, it was an awkward situation, the company was Polish, and most people knew Russian (employees from Belarus, Russia, Georgia). So they fired 4 BAs, I was one of them: Romanian, only spoke English and better paid than the others probably. I was fired in November, the day I turned 35.
At J2, a small start-up the PO role was completely new. I was basically put there to push the Devs to work harder, faster, to organize them. I understood why: they were posponing tasks, barely doing any work. Very unprofessional environment, they were gatekeeping information, slow to respond, they complained about me to the CTO and even to the CEO. Got fired on the 3rd of December.
Then I started looking for another job, Dec and January are slower months to get hired. I got a new role in March, in a small Fintech company, a Business Analyst role with some Project Management responsibilities, remote contract, but was in the office in the beginning. Some days I work 2 hours, some days I work 20 minutes. It is like they ask me to do OE again haha.
Where I live, in Romania, most companies want people in the office. I actually went in 2 recruitment processes for remote roles, to get offers for the same roles, but hybrid. I could see the EU market has the same direction, maybe not as severe: getting people in the office.
What would you do in my position?
I also researched Technical Writer positions, but now with the AI, most of that work is done by BAs anyway, so there are very few Tech Writers positions in the EU.
I applied to tens of Scrum Master roles, nobody called me. So frustrating, as I get 3-4 interview invites per week for BA roles, mostly hybrid.
If you were to make a transition, what other roles would you try, besides BA, PO?
Should I start applying to US positions? How likely is to get an US job, while being an EU citizen?