Michael R.

I did not come for the title. I ran fleet accounts for a Coventry OEM out of their Paddington office — the kind of book where a missed Q3 rebate shows up in a dealer principal's Christmas. The company had stood up a connected-car software arm in Austin and needed someone who already knew which dealers would scream. That is an L-1B sentence. The lawyers wrote it in an afternoon. We landed at AUS in July 2022 with an eight-year-old, an eleven-year-old, and a shipping crate that customs opened twice.

Someone in HR said Eanes. We rented in 78739 on the back of that sentence, then spent six weeks in a corporate apartment in 78749 waiting for a lease, which put us outside the district. The transfer window is a lottery if you are not already sitting on the right side of Brodie Lane. I queued at the district office at half seven with a folder of UK school reports. They wanted MAP scores. We had none. MoPac southbound at 17:15 is a forty-minute standstill from the Domain office to the rental. I used to walk to Paddington in eleven minutes.

I left on £64,800. The offer was $118,000 plus a cost-of-living line that did not mention Travis County property tax. I had read that Texas has no state income tax and mentally spent the difference on a house. The ISD tax on the 78739 place ate most of it. The other thing I got wrong: I thought the kids' UK reports would mean anything to an American counselor. They smiled, put the folder aside, and asked when we could sit the MAP. We sat it in a portable behind the gym, in August, while their old school was still on holiday.

The title flipped to Customer Success because that is what the Austin org called anyone who sat between a dealer principal and an engineering ticket. I still think like an account manager. That is the useful part, and also why I run out of time if you only book twenty minutes.