I left the Bay Area and moved countries for a tech job — and I'm 100 times happier and less stressed now than I was in Silicon Valley

• Agata Pona and her husband left the Bay Area and moved to Poland in 2015.

• She says that she felt immediate stress relief living in Poland.

• Pona was able to easily get an entry-level tech job, longer sick days, and two-week vacations.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Agata Pona, a 43-year-old employee at SEO agency SUSO Digital, who moved from the Bay Area to Poland. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I moved out of the San Francisco Bay Area and relocated to Poznań, Poland, in 2015, when I was 35 years old. I grew up in Silicon Valley, but my husband and I felt that we needed to leave the Bay Area to achieve a higher standard of living.

We're both originally from Poland — my family immigrated to California when I was nine.

If we'd decided to move to Portland, Arizona, or Texas — where everyone else seemed to be moving — we would've been stuck with no friends or family. We had some friends in Poland, and I still had some family, so we wouldn't be alone.

I didn't work in tech when I lived in the Bay Area, but I do now 

In the Bay Area, I worked in marketing and graphic design and did off-and-on work in café management and the brewing industry.

My husband is a sociologist by education but a motorcycle specialist by passion. He never had a specific career path but always worked and focused on the motorcycle industry. The Bay Area didn't fit into his free-spirit mentality, and he also needed a change.

When I started looking for a job in Poland after having my son, I looked for a position that would require a lot of English and I actually got callbacks. I was given chances that seemed out of reach in the Bay Area.

After looking at some tutoring options, I saw a job ad that seemed like an entry-level position at an SEO company. The ad said something like, "If you speak excellent English, we will literally teach you everything."

I half expected it to be a scam. However, after the interview, I was surprised to find out that it was a legitimate company that needed new people to train for a real project. The job market in Poland seems more relaxed. In the Bay Area, there was no getting into a job like this "by accident" for me.

I got into SEO by chance and was able to test it out and see if I actually liked it.

I always planned to stay in the US, but the living expenses made me reconsider

All I want is a moderate lifestyle — a modest house, some kids, and actually being able to save — but statistics say that an average income of $300,000 a year is needed to obtain this life in the Bay Area.

When I did the research, daycare costs about $2,000 a month for infants and $1,300 a month for older kids. We would've also needed a bigger apartment.

I worked full-time in the US, but the costs of getting health insurance through my job were too high. Rent was very expensive, and a large chunk of our paycheck went for the basics.

I looked at how much people were paying out of pocket for childbirth, and even with good insurance through a plan chosen by my employer, it was about $5,000, which was an amount I was unable to commit to. After the recession, I had problems getting back into the graphic design industry, and even though my food service jobs offered insurance, I opted out after a while or chose just the bare minimum options.

This left me wondering, what if something didn't go right? What if I had to have a C-section and couldn't go back to work right away?

I remember a girl who came into a café I worked at years before — she was a manager at Whole Foods and had just given birth. She was back to work a month later. I asked her how she was doing, and she burst into tears. She wasn't healed yet, and she had to leave her baby behind and go back to work. I could see that she didn't have a choice, and that terrified me.

We concluded that it made more sense to move

Our decision to leave the US wasn't only based on money. It was also about being given a chance to live the "American dream," the idea that equal opportunity is supposed to be available to any American, allowing their highest aspirations to be achieved. The truth is, I didn't feel that in the US.

I feel it over here, in Poland. Here, I was able to start off at an entry-level position because there was one available for people with no experience. If I noticed an ad like that back in California, even five minutes after it got posted, it probably would've been scooped up by people with actual experience.

I was allowed to grow and move up the ladder in Poland — and not by beating my way to the top with countless overtime and lunches spent at my desk. I could take a vacation, get sick, and go back to work without feeling like I did something wrong or "wasted" sick days.

In Poland, if you have a doctor's note, you don't have short, limited time off— you can actually ride out a bad flu in bed instead of going to work with a fever, which I'd often done in California. Here, I could take a mandated day off when my son was sick. I felt like a human.

I also felt like I could actually commit and do better at work because I was treated better, which makes me happy. I never knew how much I needed that. To me, it's the ultimate success.

Moving out of the Bay Area felt like someone turned all the heat off before I boiled to death 

When I left the Bay Area, I received the type of inner peace I never thought possible. Even as I was leaving, I felt like I underestimated what living there actually cost me stress-wise.

The constant stress was not only about feeling like I had to rush to be productive constantly — it was about worrying about healthcare, battling the rising housing costs, and feeling that the system was somehow set up against me. It was the type of stress that can be compared to the hot water that slowly boils a frog.

After I got settled in Poland, I realized how much chronic stress was actually weighing down on me. Just one example was after I gave birth at a local hospital in Poland, my husband picked me up and reassured me that I didn't have to pay any bills. I could just walk out without financial paperwork. I felt like I was stealing a baby.

After I went back to work in Poland, I also went to therapy for the first time. This wouldn't have happened in the Bay Area — going to specialists was a luxury and not in my insurance plan.

In Poland, I have to take 14 days off in a row. They do this so people can have an actual restful break instead of just taking solitary days off here and there.

The real cost of living in the Bay Area was the insecurity I constantly felt

I also felt guilt for not fitting in, as everyone else around me was focused on jumping through all the hoops of this hyper-competitive, cutthroat environment.

I used to hike the Stanford Dish Loop Trail all the time and passed joggers who had audile conversations about tech, IPOs, and their startup funding. They seemed very aware that they were indeed in the promised land. I'd listen to these conversations as I passed and felt so out of place.

I go on hikes in Poland, and the first time I passed a group of Nordic walkers, I felt a sudden, happy culture shock when I realized they were talking about which Geranium strain blooms the most in the fall. It finally felt like real life.

There are negatives about living in Poland — life isn't as convenient

The biggest negative is air pollution in the winter. A lot of people still burn coal in their homes, while their neighbors might have solar panels, which was a huge shock for me. Also, everything seems slower and requires more energy. Shops are closed on Sundays, which makes life harder to plan.

Not everything is great about healthcare in Poland, either. In some public healthcare institutions, the conditions aren't as nice as in the US — no comfortable and sleek waiting rooms, no newest equipment.

Long waiting periods are the biggest problem, with months and sometimes years to wait for some bigger procedures if you have state insurance. But I'd rather wait than not have any options at all or be forced into debt, as is common in the US.

I get private insurance through my work now, and it's nowhere close to the co-payments of insurance in the US.

I do miss some things about the Bay Area — but Big Tech made some of those things scarce 

I miss the whirlwind of food and culture — I grew up with Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Salvadoran, Vietnamese, Australian, and Irish friends. Most of all, I miss the nostalgia of the old Bay Area. Even people who stayed there feel the same way, they no longer live in that Bay Area, either.

I liked the quirky neighborhood businesses with a long history. These places went out of business quickly and were particularly vulnerable to rent increases. As these places closed, the values of the whole area seemed to change.

But after years of living away from the Bay Area, I don't miss the stress and feel happier living in Poland than I did in California.

If you relocated to a new country and want to share your story, Please email Manseen Logan at mlogan@businessinsider.com.

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