Everything I Learned Moving from New Zealand to New York (So You Don't Have To Cry Into Your Bagel Like I Did)

It’s officially been a year and a half since I made the journey from New Zealand to New York.

And while Dorothy was right when she uttered ‘there’s no place like home’, here’s my guide on everything I’ve learned over the past year to help bring home to me.

I’m breaking this into the three things every Kiwi & Aussie needs to survive America:

Work & Community - how to find a fulfilling job and get your first group chat invite
Coffee & Food - where to get a flat white that won’t leave you questioning how many ounces is too many (also what the heck is an ounce)
Fitting In - what words to avoid & how to pronounce water so people understand you and you don’t need to question your existence

I get it, a long form post in 2026? What's going on?!

I'm sure half of you will get your AI Chief of Staff we all spent far too long building to summarize this badly.

But for the other half with both the attention span and courage to go on, I hope you enjoy!

Work (How the heck do I land a job in NYC?)

Coming from a small country, I was worried about how hard it’d be landing a job.

And after a month of applying, 50 applications, 49 ignores, and one polite “no”, that worry started to really set in.

I began to feel my life force slowly dwindle away while those around me attempted to do their best to hold together what was left of my self esteem.

What’s so hard about finding a job?

In New Zealand we don’t have many world-renowned companies. And while Australia has a few more, the pathways to land early jobs at companies, like Anthropic, HubSpot, Notion, Stripe, Apple, etc are non-existent.

You can imagine it’d be hard for a US hiring manager to look at my CV, see a wave of unrecognizable logos, and get as excited as how they feel when they look at option b, the Duke grad who spent 2 years at Google, then 4-years at Vanta, and is now at Clay.

And for some reason The University of Auckland doesn’t strike the same emotional chord as Duke (although we’re rated the same on the university tier list!).

Oh, and while we’re here naming hard things, let’s face the 363.2 kg (800 pound) gorilla in the room.

We also need a visa.

So how would I go about getting a job from NZ to the US today?

Enough of the tension building, Steven how did you do it?!

After landing three jobs, and being closer to the action, here are a 3 things that would have helped baby Steven land on his feet a little faster.

1. Change Your Location

In 34 years, I have never received a message on LinkedIn from a recruiter.

Not that baby Steven had a LinkedIn, but you get the point.

I simply assumed marketing folks just never got DM’d.

Meanwhile all my developer friends are talking about how many requests they need to ignore 🤣

And then one fateful day, everything changed.

It was your usual Tuesday.

I was updating my LinkedIn profile subtitle for the 3rd time when I saw the location field.

I stood tall, hands on my hips, deciding that now I had been in NYC for a few months, it was time to proudly say ‘hey world, I made over safe and sound.’

Exactly 48-hours later I got what I thought was a personalized DM from the universe.

It was in the form of Eoin (my future boss) admiring my profile and wanting to talk about a new role they were hiring for at AirOps.

The plot twist was, it turns out Eoin hadn’t actually sought me out himself.

For some reason his hands weren’t guided to type in my name into LinkedIn.

It was the fact I had been talking about AI, growth marketing, and that profile had NYC in it which led his outbound automation right to my front door.

So are you about to move to New York? San Francisco? Austin?

Update your LinkedIn to state proudly where you’re about to end up!

Why?

Hiring has gone from an inbound activity to an outbound one.

More and more tools like Juicebox are appearing.

Their latest feature?

“Juicebox Agents search, screen, and engage top talent for you. 24/7, fully autonomous, and always improving.”

The employer enters what they’re after, like “I'm looking for senior engineers in the Bay Area who have built search infrastructure in the past”.

And Juicebox goes out, finds and identifies top talent to DM.

So by talking about AI, adding my location, using terms that these tools are on the hunt for, describing my previous achievements, and more, it led Eoin (and my job) right to me.

When you’re done optimizing, sign-up for a Juicebox trial, type in your dream job description, and see if you appear!

2. Go for companies under 100 people.

The reality is that getting a job at a larger company will be hard.

We have things working against us.

Distracting the person doing the hiring from seeing your beautiful face and giving you the compensation you deserve.

Hiring folks at large companies get 100+ CVs in the first hour they put out their job.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one wanting to live the dream and move to NYC ;)

The whole world is dreaming the same thing at the same time.

So for my first role, I went small.

I found a company who was on the journey I had done twice now.

They were at the seed stage and looking to go to Series A.

So I updated my CV, polished my shiniest shoes, and sent them my application.

“Here is how I took company A and company B from seed to Series A.

In a seed stage or small company, often it’s a founder that looks through the CVs.

They don’t use the tools larger companies use to screen us out.

So lean into your personality, craft a beautiful CV, bold the parts that you want them to read (you’ve only got a 10-second skim read before they decide whether or not to move on), and get hired!

3. Lean into what makes you different

It turns out my mum was right all along. What makes me different makes me special.

The huge advantage we have coming from APAC is the fact that we’re scrappy as heck.

At these big US companies you’ll be hired to do one specific thing. Like manage the budget & targeting of LinkedIn ads with a team of others doing the same thing.

In New Zealand or Australia, you’re often acting as a whole team.

A marketer is often building websites, launching email marketing campaigns, setting up HubSpot, jumping over to do some LinkedIn retargeting, helping the the CEO with her LinkedIn posts, optimizing for AI Search, and building workflows, all before lunch.

That gives us a huge advantage.

You’ll be able to understand the whole context of the business and add so much value. Highlight that on your CV. Shout about your achievements on your LinkedIn about section.

How To Find Coffee & Food Spots

So while my main full-time job, is… well… my full-time job.

My second (and potentially more important) full-time job is finding places for lunch or coffee for me and my friends.

Each dot is a place on my list!

And what I’ve learned in America is that all Google Reviews are not equal.

Never fear, here’s how to decipher American reviews!

The Google Maps Translation 🗺️

In New York City, price does not equal quality.

In fact, price and good reviews is often a direct translation to the ‘vibe’.

The vibe in NYC is made up of three things:

The interior design
The price (how fancy does it make you seem)
How hard is it to get in (this usually means it’s so loud inside)

Vibes are very highly rated here.

Apparently in NYC, people prioritize how you’re perceived much more than in APAC, so luckily we can ignore that and prioritize the good food instead 😂

Here are two examples!

How to find good coffee (and avoid the hype) ☕️

First we have 787 Coffee.

EVERY branch has 2k+ reviews.

So you go there.

Hopeful.

The flat white turns out... bad??

What?? But that have so many reviews!

So many reviews you start to think, maybe you’re the problem not them.

They probably just had a bad day!

So you go back.

You give them a second chance.

And you instantly regret another $9 USD + tip coffee ($16.20 NZD).

For coffee places, reviews this high only means one thing.

They do good iced coffee & syrups.

And we are not here for iced coffee.

Instead in order to find a good coffee spot, look for:

Less reviews
A hipster interior
Photos where they serve hot coffees in small cups.

Note to reader: In America most folks don’t know what a flat white is. Apparently NZ/Australia made up the term. So in order to get a small coffee, you either need to say ‘flat white / latte in a 6-ounce cup’.

What’s an ounce?

No one knows.

But 6 of them seems to be the perfect amount.

Cheatsheet for yum coffee

Dear Coffee (Upper East Side)
Sote Coffee (Upper West Side)
Neighborhood Coffee Shop (Soho)
Arcane (Greenwich Village)
Radiant Cafe (West Village)

How to find good food? 🥘

Above you can see what I’m calling an establishment.

We’re talking 3k reviews.

We’re talking 4.8 stars.

We’re talking my parents used to go here.

And my parents parents.

And my parents parents parents.

And that what we’re valuing is the ambiance and the nostalgia.

We’re valuing that this tastes like how my grandma used to make it.

And while your grandma is probably the sweetest lady in the world, I don’t have that same love and connection.

So where do we go instead?

We look for again, less reviews.

Less reviews, means less lines, means less weighting on the prestige of ‘getting in’.

We pair less reviews with a lovely interior.

And then we enjoy the fruits of our labor!

Note to reader: affordable sushi doesn't exist here.

Cheatsheet for yum food

Here are some places to check out!

LumLum (Hells Kitchen)
Laliko (West Village)
Oti (Lower East Side)
Tziki (Chelsea) - good for a casual bite
Regular NYC (FiDi) → Australian owned!

Final note about food, when you’re looking at moving, take a look to see if there’s an H Mart or a Trader Joes nearby. It will quickly be at the top of your priority list!

What words you’ll need to learn (and forget)

Okay. So you made it.

You’ve got the job.

You’ve located the place to take yourself out to celebrate the news.

You arrive, you ask a question, and they look back at you and say those dreaded words.

“What was that?”

On top of pronunciation, there are also some words that I thought everyone used but turns out, 400 million people will look at you a little puzzled if you say it (I’ve put the translation beside each one):