A Friday pizza lunch at Altona Beach was supposed to be where I negotiated my future. It turned into the moment I found out I had to leave Australia.
In 2016, I moved to Australia on a temporary visa, chasing a dream and a future. I had left my job in Poland and had an interview aligned with the same company, but with the local Australian entity in Melbourne.
The interview got me a three-month contract. I told myself it was a formality before they offered something real. I treated the three months as a formality. Of course they would keep me. I had already made up my mind.
Three months later, during a team lunch at Altona Beach, I rehearsed negotiating my visa. My future in Australia hinged entirely on this conversation. After lunch, I was summoned back to the reality I’d been dreading. I stepped into his office, my mind racing with negotiations.
To my surprise, I was told that they could no longer keep me around as they had lost some projects they had been counting on. The news shattered me because this wasn’t about a paycheck – it was about my entire future. Losing the job meant losing the right to stay, and I had already told everyone back home this move would work.
Friday’s blow came with devastating finality: I was out of a job. I remember going back home by bus that stopped around the corner and thinking that I would need to soon pack my things and move back to Europe where my friends would say that they had told me it would not work out.
I sat at the back of the bus and did the math: no job, wrong visa, fifteen thousand kilometers from home, and a group of friends waiting to say they told me so.
Somewhere between my stop and the front door, I made one decision: I would find another sponsor before my visa ran out, or I would leave on my own terms.
I knew I had one last chance to find a sponsor before the visa clock ran out.
I gave myself one constraint: engineering roles only, because the degree that had taken years to earn was the one asset I still had.
It seemed impossible, but I had nothing to lose and everything to prove.
I woke up on Saturday morning and I started working on my resume and cover letter.
I shortlisted all the companies that met my criteria and noted their locations. I knew sending an email would not suffice. I needed to go beyond and really try my best.
By the end of the weekend I had sent resumes to all the places and most importantly prepared a list of companies I would visit in person. Each place represented a potential lifeline to stay in the country. I checked all the buses and trains (I didn’t have a car) and had a perfect plan which place I would visit at what time, so I could maximize the chance of landing a job as soon as possible.
Then on Monday somewhere after lunch time I visited a company in Clayton, Melbourne. I spoke at the counter with a gentleman named Joe and handed him my resume.
The next morning I received a text message that they would like to invite me for an interview which was arranged later that week.
I had studied everything I possibly could about the organization. It turned out that they recently bought a manufacturing plant and they needed to fully reorganize it and would need help from someone who had my skills.
The interview went well and they offered me a 6 months contract, starting the following Monday.
Seven days after being let go, I was employed again, with a six-month contract and a path to the visa I had come here for.
Three years later, the same company that hired me off a cold visit processed my permanent visa sponsorship.
The beach lunch where I expected to negotiate my future turned out to be the last meal before my real beginning. Fifteen thousand kilometres from home, wrong visa, no car, no guarantees: the only plan that made sense was to act as if the odds did not exist. That is still the only plan I know.