Live your own life and don't let others tell you how you're supposed to exist.
Because "how do we know you didn't copy paste it from a tutorial and claim it as yours?"
It is insulting, and frankly discouraging. As if the only one true way to tell whether you know your stuff or not is to check if you can solve some silly riddle/puzzle under the gun.
One solution is to only apply to companies without a broken hiring process, but sadly they're very rare.
That sounds a bit harsh.
Unless you're going for a role that requires some kind of explicit/specific knowledge - and you're clearly not able to demonstrate any skill in that area - I wouldn't put too much stock in the interview processes of Unicorns actually being indicative of your true skill.
I've been told, during an interview, that I was clearly incompetent and the interviewer terminated the interview. This was because I stumbled on doing a series of whiteboard exercises to solve some obscure brain-teasers.
I ended up getting the job anyway (I had worked with people there, and they vouched for me) and learned that to many of the interviewers, they found great delight in finding the most obscure and weird problems, trick questions and coding challenges.
It didn't help with selecting for competency, and the product the company was shipping wasn't exactly ground breaking or needing of someone who could on the spot solve arcane bullshit.
Also off topic but what was it like working for non-profits, and what sort of work did you do?
All my work with non-profits involved doing open source in collaboration with them as a consultant. It was great :)
The most frustrating thing I have experienced is that society in general is still not accepting of people taking "sabbatical" in their 20s. While about 10% of people think it's cool that I quit my job and am flying by the seat of my pants, the other 90% hear that I'm unemployed and treat me like a pariah. It's been very eye opening to me just how linked your personal identity is to your job. And I don't mean job as in "I am a programmer", but specifically the actual name of the company you are employed by. I've had people be very interested in conversation with me at social events when I talk about work-related things, but when I actually say the words "I don't currently work anywhere and am taking some time off", those same people have literally picked up their drinks and walked away.
It's particularly bad with recruiters now that I'm ready to start looking for a new job again. Even though I left my company on extremely good terms (they literally begged me to stay!), recruiters seem to see that I left [insert major well respected company here] and assume that I must been have fired. Most still seem to think Google et al are some extremely coveted workplaces and can't imagine that someone would willingly leave them. It is a very tough hurdle to get over.
As long as there isn't something seriously wrong (such as depression that leads to inability to enjoy pursuits), maybe that is OK. It could be important to be able to accept that you don't always have to accomplish something, and that your life doesn't have to be about maximizing how much you can accomplish. (Which is a different thing than saying it's OK to never accomplish anything or OK to consistently accomplish very little.) You don't recover from burnout or whatever else by driving yourself crazy with worry and guilt over how you aren't living up to some standard.
About the weird reactions, I've been through that after making a similar choice, and I've found that with some people, they are just not even slightly open-minded about it and they are going to judge you instantly. You can't do much about those people.
But with other people, their reaction will depend on how you present it to them. You've just told them you're doing something far outside the social norm, and they're going to be thrown for a loop and wondering why and how to understand it. They don't know if you're a lazy, broke, aimless loser or a person who has a plan and is doing this for some kind of purpose and real benefit to making their life better overall. You're going to get a whole different reaction depending on whether you say "Uhh... so yeah, I'm not working anywhere right now" or "I was fortunate enough to be in a good place financially, and I really wanted to take a year off, so I am". The second one signals that you're in charge, you're content with what you're doing, and your successful enough to give yourself the opportunity.
Are you sure it's that, or could it be because they find they have trouble relating to someone who is in such a privileged financial position to do nothing for two years, when they themselves may be financially insecure?
People relate through shared struggle and experience. When you say, "I don't work and I don't need to", you've dashed any sense of camaraderie a stranger, or even many friends, might have felt.
However, how you present that info can make a difference.
I think it might be attitude personally. I am 26 and have been making it on my own for the last two years, and I think I'm so excited about what I've been doing and sharing it that people always seem curious enough to listen. Be able to hype up what you do! Whatever it is. That's a skill for sure.
To me, this sounds like a good filter. In fact I have been using this sub-consciously with girls when they ask me about my day job. I don't answer with "serial killer", it is screaming "I'm unemployed and unsecure". But rather "I don't really work or have anything right now".
Start getting rid of useless people. The sooner, the better. It is very hard to get rid of people if they are opening discussions so this time they just disappeared away.
Wow. Really. Fuck them. Whats so great about talking to ppl with office job.
The trick for getting around this is to form an LLC and say that you were freelancing. No one will ask questions.
And, after all, it's true. You would have taken money in exchange for services rendered, had a sufficiently-enticing opportunity presented itself. So it's not even a lie.
But seriously, if you enjoyed the job so much, why leave? Why not just take a quick vacation and keep enjoying the job?
Those first few weeks of unstructured time were essential. Not framing the time as having to accomplish something is important - I found that my intrinsic motivation came back on its own anyway.
If you’re looking to take a break, then just do that like the OP. Take a break and do some light coding only if you want to.
If you want to do entrepreneurship Then you need to cut down the risk when you are going full time. So have some momentum for an idea - Ie you’ve vetted it, built it and charging at least 5 people for it. Something that lessens your risks.
Also make a commitment on a timeframe after which you would quit and start looking for a job. Eg: if I have 0 revenue after 1 year I will quit.
It doesn't have to, a lot of the people I know started their business because they wanted to get away from that culture.
Consider broader definitions of "accomplishment" and "wealth" than "job" and "paycheck."
I speak from experience on this. A few months into a year-long sabbatical my brain had rewired itself and the burnout healed. I started finding enjoyment in the small quiet moments again. 4 years later, I can say that the sabbatical was the best career move, the best financial decision, and the best personal decision I have ever made. It led me to a new home, a new career, and much new wisdom.
This is what I did for 2-3 years.
I slept in everyday, went to the gym or for a run, rode my bike around, read books, went to movies, watched TV, shopped for groceries, cooked most of my meals, went on dates, and pretty much never left town.
Eventually I only had like 6 or so months of expenses in the bank and got another job.
Wasn't a waste to me, I loved it.
Usually I take a week or two letting myself experience calm and boredom, and then reading what others are doing inspires some ideas.
Usually I then write myself mini proposals like you'd do for your boss or a grant, clarifying what I think I know, what I think might work and why it works be interesting, how the problem I'm considering is done best now, and how I'd go about developing that problem into a project.
It takes maybe a day or three per proposal, but saves months of chasing bad ideas like a new electronic device that solve a technical problem in a cool new way (but does it worse than the current solution.
It just takes a different amount of time and introspection and recovery for each person. There are so many ways to live a good life, and many are better than what we thought we wanted in high school or college. Don't be afraid to explore things that seem silly, no one is watching and it's the only way to learn.
But boredom while alone is critical. Perhaps the most important part to redeveloping curiosity and processing what we think we want is silence.
Though, that's not to say discipline isn't an issue as well. I've had several ideas, and never really followed through because of lack of discipline/not seeing how it's going to help me earn money, etc.
Also, if you're going to use this opportunity to learn a new language/framework/etc, I'd dip the toes in the water now.
I quit my job to work on a project (http://ngrid.io). I’m close to being done but in the process I’ve met a lot of people and I have three job offers lined up without interviewing.
The best part of doing this myself was to become comfortable with this. At the end of it, you feel more free than most people. Or at least I did.
Becoming ok with not being defined by money or accomplishments is one of the nicer parts of growing older. You can finally relax and shed some of the angst from youth.
Everyone needs money, but ultimately if you live a simple life with simple tastes then you can still afford some gadgets to satisfy your hacking spirit.
It takes at least a year just to decompress, and then another year to become comfortable with not having anything to show for your time. That is the growth.
Disclaimer: my CV has often been a horrendous mess of 3-6 month "gaps" (during which time I learned many of my most valuable life lessons) and it never cost me more than a month of training myself up, networking, and interviewing.
Another disclaimer: I've always been of the habit of saving my money so that long gaps feel stress-free and I don't have to take the first job I'm offered.
I consider this a self-reflective question on the interviewer's part. If your interview can't sniff out the gap in their experience, then there are two possibilities.
A) The most likely one: your interview sucks and you're not as good as you think you are
B) The gap doesn't matter.
I'm frankly confused as to why a resume gap would be relevant to anyone. If anything, my resume gap cleared up my head and I've dabbled in some things I don't usually touch so it made me a better employee, if we want to use that language.
This just seems like a cultural holdover and one we could eliminate with more people taking breaks.
I took six months off after being fired(!) (four months truly off, ~6 weeks prepping, looking for new role and interviewing). During my time off, I traveled, got healthy after years of neglect, created a couple of mildly interesting side projects, read oodles, and generally was just a man about town.
I told recruiters in month one that I was taking some time off but that I'd love to speak to them around month four. When the time came, I still had very good choices and landed a fairly coveted position.
I did have one particular worry that I guess aligns with what you're saying. I felt that if the three or four good companies I'd hit snooze on in month one all fell through and I had the explain the six month gap after the fact rather than prior to, the onus would have been on me to prove that I hadn't just been applying everywhere for six months with no takers.
What I see a lot around me are people quitting their job to join the new one on the following week. I never understood that either. Besides retirement it's probably the only time in their life where they can take long holidays.
Jokes aside, that's a really admirable - and in my experience, rare - thing you're doing. Your employees are really lucky.
This guy has a biography online about what he did so screw that. Just post a link to this article if you re-enter the work force. But you'll have something to put there anyway.
Take time off (I definitely needed it, my anxiety was through the roof, my sleep schedule was really fucked up). The days just seemed to be slipping away. Work was both stressful and boring. I'm actually pretty happy these days which is something I haven't felt in a long time.
I've convinced two friends to do the same, they are both very thankful.
My skills are 10x what they used to be. There is a lot of non-linear gains from working 10 hours a day at your pace, on shit you care about. There are days where in 2 days I do stuff that might have taken me 2 weeks previously.
My confidence as a programmer has also really improved. Like few things are truly impossible given enough time.
The thing to remember is that even if your thing doesn't work out, you'll be in a better position.
Hit me up if you want to talk about your plans, my email is in my profile.
Check out the project I'm working on if you feel like it http://ngrid.io.
https://tastory.co https://swiftlightning.io
3 months in a job search to end this retirement funds burn... Still haven't gotten a single offer. Rejected post-interviews by Triplebyte, Google, Blockchain.info, Snapchat thus far. Plenty of mid interview ghosting by startups. And with technically only 1.5 years doing iOS, plenty of companies didn't even pick-up my resume...
And gosh are these processes super slow. Maybe cuz I'm interviewing mostly remote from Vancouver BC with mostly US firms...
Current music theory is kinda terrible. I’ve developed something that I like to think supersedes it and I’m beyond pumped to show it to the world. But it’s hard so it’s taking some time.
Devil's advocate: career breaks can be toxic to your getting hired. I recall once reading that it can be comparable to a criminal record.
If your going to travel, travel. Travel around the world, drive the pan-american highway. Travel can be cheap as long as you can save up enough for transport to a cheap country: Go to mexico, learn spanish. Go to India, live on a mountaintop. Its actually fun to keep in the loop tech wise from a random location somewhere! And the hiring manager in two years time will be jealous, not suspicious.
If you really want to work (during your only long holiday for the next 30 years!), then make that your focus. Make the side project happen, join an accelerator, make it a full time job - because it will be if its successful. If its to learn a new field (carpentry, art, mechanic) then take the time to be become an apprentice, don't just google youtube videos.
Do something fun. Take a few chances. And I can pretty much guarantee you wont regret it at all.
I'm very happy right now, but mostly that's because I have a roommate who's unemployed right now, so most of the time I'm not alone in the house and have another person to go on adventures with, as well as have most of my network of college friends and friends still in college around.
On the con side, I've discovered that unstructured working at home descends quickly into distraction and browsing HN too much. I think I might try setting time each day where I go to a coffeeshop and work on coding projects, creative writing, and reading, as the change of scenery might help change my focus modal.
Finally, I recognize that I'm incredibly privileged to be able to do this. Having well-payed internships and a 1%'er family is giving me an opportunity for relaxation and travel that most Americans lack. I'm planning on spending more of my hiatus time volunteering for local causes for what I wish I could say is the goodness of my heart, but is honestly out of guilt and boredom.
It's good to be self-aware enough to recognise this. If you're privileged enough to be able to afford yourself a sabbatical or if you belong to the 1% the best use of your time if you want to give back probably isn't to volunteer for a local cause.
At best it's only a drop in the ocean. At worst it's a self-serving effort to absolve yourself from the 'sin' of privilege.
If you're well off one way to help is Effective Altruism ( https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ ), particularly the pledge to give: https://app.effectivealtruism.org/pledge
That isn't to say that helping others around you by putting in time and effort isn't a worthwhile, rewarding endeavour but one probably shouldn't trick oneself into believing that by doing so one automatically has made a considerable difference.
Can anyone guess how many 1%'ers are on HN?
Sounds like a good time for an impromptu poll?
Say you get 5% real returns in stocks after taxes on distributions. After 15 years, you've lost about 10 months of salary at your effective rate.
Having to work 4 extra months 15 years in the future to take 6 months off now seems like a reasonable trade. (It's a 3.5% annual discount rate on the future).
PS: if you get into a situation where you have an income surge one year (say an IPO), it's a no brainier to do this. The tax rate differences on income now vs future can be high enough to match all stock returns.
I'm currently doing a smaller version of what Joshua describes and had to get approval from manager to get unpaid time off from work. His response: I wish I could have done the same thing. He later even admitted that he was living vicariously through me!
That being said, do save as much as you can as early as you can. Just don't let saving get in the way of living your life
They/we aren't, for the most part, privileged - they land in London with 50 quid, buy an A-Z at the airport and doss with friends under the kitchen table till they land a job doing whatever. Save and party until summer and then a long af van trip around Europe seeing the sights. Rinse and repeat if you've got the stomach for it. Variations exist.
The leaving your country part is the important part. Even if it's English speaking you'd be surprised at the resilience you need to just get s* done arriving somewhere at midnight with no idea where you're going to sleep.
Being punished for 'gaps' in your CV is a cultural thing. There are no gaps in your life, just... life.
One thing that I've discovered working on my own is the value of solitude. When I'm really alone, I can talk to myself out loud and I've found that it allows me to think 10X clearer. Maybe it's just me, but externalizing my thoughts without bothering about what others think it's great for creativity.
I work hard on my community projects, and then actually go out and socialize when I'm tired of working. Sometimes that's every night, but sometimes (if I'm feeling invigorated by a task), I will work nonstop for a week, before I need a social recharge.
Obviously, that is a single person's perspective of it, but I feel like it would be comparable if I'd been in a relationship :)
If you graduate with lots of student loans, aren’t making a salary that makes it easy to save (which is common even for high earners in expensive cities), and don’t have a network to get reliable freelance/contract work (assuming what you do could be freelanced/contracted out — engineering can but some jobs/skillsets are much harder to do, especially if you’re in your 20s), this is the sort of thing that might be good for your mental and physical well-being, but could end up causing more stresses in the future.
As others have said, fair or not, having gaps on a resume can be problematic (and ageism in tech is a real thing) when trying to reseek employment. At the very least, re-entering the workforce at the same level (assuming you left at “senior” or a mid-level equivalent) might be tough. I suppose if you were a junior dev or just starting out, it would be easier to come back at the same level — but rob may not have the same burnout in that case.
That said, I do think it’s very valuable to recognize what you want and what you don’t want out of life and a career. And that might mean not being in the rat race in your 20s and it might mean realizing you don’t aspire to have the lifestyle that comes with being a well-paid tech worker if it means you have no work/life balance and are slowly killing yourself.
I used to dream about just quitting my job and taking a sabbatical. I was too scared that after the break was over, I wouldn’t be able to find employment the same way. Maybe that was unfounded, but that was my fear.
I wound up switching careers and even though I make more money, I have a better work/life balance and I no longer dream of quitting. And for what it’s worth, the extra money is nice — but if I made what I made before and had the same lifestyle I have now, it would be worth it. I’d even take a pay cut.
Definitely agree with the negatives, the procrastination and loneliness is very real when you're on your own. I tried to make my own app and started getting depressed when I associated its failure with my own (since who else do you have to blame).
Still don't regret it though, I think it actually helped my career by forcing me to learn parts of running a business and programming I never would have done otherwise. But it's not all roses for sure.
Re Europeans traveling around Asia - Europeans tend to graduate university later than Americans and then embark on one or more internships before diving into their work contracts. It's not uncommon to take a break between those transitional periods to travel for a bit. But it is uncommon to leave your permanent contract to travel Asia for two years.
I read a shit tonne this last 8 months and have noticed a big upgrade in my worldview. I shipped a couple of projects on my own which I'm proud of too.
I grew immensely from the experience and a whole bunch of things I always toyed with the idea while working I actually got to try out and see how I really felt about them and not how I thought I was going to feel.
The recruiters being suspicious about the time off thing is something I wasn't suspecting but I did get that vibe. I made a point to network the whole time I was taking off and have been invited to visit a small company I'm pretty excited about after an hour chatting to the CTO. Political savvy was one of my unexpected skills at my last job, so I feel like so long as I can get in a room I can get a job (provided I'm actually interested and think the company would be a good fit).
So many lessons learned. Perhaps both good and bad.
So far very disillusioned. Seems like if the projects didn't become million dollar businesses, then it's algorithm puzzles or working at McDonalds. Shipped products doesn't matter one bit...
Side projects aren't the be all end all to gainful employment. You need to use your network to build relationships and engage with people you know that can help you get employed.
This is new territory for me though, so we'll see.
I'm not in the US on, so I don't play the whole unicorn game. I imagine that's a whole different ball game.
I should have spent some more time on job hunting, in retrospect. At my current job as a consultant I am back-end code-monkeying in a large team where most developers don't have a technical background - it's not very challenging from a technical perspective (even though I like the working environment in other aspects). My current employer pushes me to get certified for some front-end technologies, which I don't find interesting (and have no value for the gig I'm currently assigned to).
My true interest are OSes, drivers, optimization, FPGA's, electronics, compilers, assembly, microcontrollers, graphics... But I can't seem to find a job in that field, mostly because I don't have work experience in those fields. I also have a tendency to be very humble about my experience, which I think is a good thing in general, but I think sometimes people wrongly classify me as 'very junior'. On top of that, everybody seems to be looking for C# programmers, but the pay seems to be a bit lower in more technical fields. I don't care that much about my salary, but right now I am the one with literally the best background (4 academic studies), and the lowest income (basically every time I talk about it with someone, he/she goes "hm, that's pretty low"). I have had some good offers (about 15% more than I currently earn), but they came with a traineeship which seemed not very challenging and would force me to stay with that company for 2 years.
A very common scenario I end up in is that I'm talking to a very enthousiastic HR person ("I think you're a very good fit for our company!"), but the offer ends up very low ("Well, you're a junior after all.").
I am thinking about quitting my current job to brush up some skills (mainly Python, Vulkan, OpenGL, and some OS API stuff) and build a portfolio, but I'm too afraid to be unproductive and end up in a worse situation than before (about 1 year of working experience and a giant gap in my CV after that). Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any advice?
Studying 'Cracking the Coding Interview' like everyone else. Nobody cares about specific technology either it seems like these days... Including Triplebyte. Sick of it.
Are you from the US? It is not in line with my experience. Employers here (in the Netherlands) care very much about experience with specific technologies. It is common that job offers demand a couple of years experience with very specific frameworks, libraries or programming languages, even for entry-level jobs. Anything having to do with data science is also out of question (even though I have a math background), since I didn't study data science and have no work experience (never mind that I am interested in data science and read stuff in my spare time).
This sucks if you want to switch jobs, because it dramatically limits your options.
Actually I started setting up a Redmine to pursue more complex goals that are usually not related to work.
In the past I also used classical todo lists on a sheet of paper or Asana for some time. But I gave up both, what I observed happens after using this 'tool' after a while: indeed a lot gets done, it's even fulfilling check an item, especially on paper. So after a year or so, the things on the list end up being more and more difficult to do. The only easy tasks are the recently added ones but the list becomes more and more static.
Problem with todo lists is that they are the end product of some ideas that happen at random times. But you lose the idea behind it, so a proper project management tool is worth it. (In fact when you look at how Asana developed over time, it converges into something like that...)
Something like trello seems more the scale.
Personally I just wish it had TeX support. Does anyone know a good, personal project management tool that allows writing sections in latex?
I found that once I got over the hurdle of learning emacs, the friction in managing tasks once you have learned the tool is nearly nil.
Further, it definitely supports embedded latex fragments, exporting to pdf, etc.
Conclusion: It's really all about a plan first, discipline about the plan's boundaries and self-confidence when you present your achievements after. Else you may be viewed as a lazy hedonist.
E.g., My PLAN is to take year to train for an Ironman. That's about 4h a day on average. I'd also eat well, stretch and keep up with the ancillaries of such hard training to prevent injuries. Then I'd be studying 4 online courses à day in whatever I want. My goal would be to finish a few nanodegrees and a few specializations on Coursera. Courses would be about 5h per day. Every day, non-stop. At the end, I would have done one Ironman AND add a whole lot of skill to my arsenal. It's not cheap - calculated it to be about $40K so far with a mortgage and rent to pay but I'm working on creative ways to lessen this. Last but not least, I have three non-profit projects I want to do. One huge dream, one medium, one small. If I went to an interview à year after this starts having been disciplined enough to accomplish even 75% the above, I'm pretty sure not even the hardest interviewer would be skeptical.
Basically, I view the monk year as the year where I still grind. But I grind to add value to yours truly NOT the corporation.
Except all the challenges echoed by others in the comments are real: overcoming procrastination and doing focused work. Actually the former I can manage, the latter is harder. All I have to show for side project time is a long list of smaller projects, I can't manage to take one of them and build/polish it into something significant. Somehow having the choice 100 fun project makes devoting time to just 1 super hard.
Maybe half-time off to some extend is worse for procrastination than full-time, since I can always fall back on my work at BigCo as a sign of progress in my life.
This situation should be ideal, I know the path I should take, the opportunity is there for the taking, but so far have not managed.
I cannot help but feel related to the author himself. My career, short in tech terms (2+ years at current job, similar durarion at previous job) has reached a stagnant phase, where motivation and professional growth almost do not exist.
As a consequence I'm thinking of switching jobs, but have no idea where should I aim for, for what kind of role and industry I would like to work for...Right now I'm lost regarding jobs lookup.
Maybe I should take a sabbatical period to think things over, but it's quite a leap forward, mostly economically.
At the moment, career wise, om not in a position to go down in hours but that is what I'll explore in the future. A 6 hour workday, working remotely more often and/or trying to split my workday up by going to the gym during work hours. This is tough though with meetings and all that.
I've also done a 1.5 year sabbatical, and I can relate. It's both very challenging (to pull off successfully) but also can be very rewarding.
It would cost the company next to nothing, and it would be a preferable alternative to the employee quitting due to stress or burnout.
For the employee it significantly lowers their risk of unemployment. They can either 1. go to a better company, or 2. return to their old company.
In the case of US companies, there's also the added benefit of the possibility of the employee and employer coming to a mutually beneficial arrangement on maintaining the employee's healthcare plan during the sabbatical.
It would cost the company next to nothing, in my view, because the steps the company has to take is almost exactly the same:
1. Employee quits. Company immediately looks for a replacement. One year down the road, when the company is expanding, they have to look for another worker.
2. Employee goes on sabbatical. Company immediately looks for a replacement. One year down the road, when the company is expanding, they first contact the sabbatical guy if they want to come back, and if not they have to look for another worker.
In scenario 1, the company pays for the cost of two hirings with 100% certainty. In scenario 2, worst case the company pays for the cost of two hirings; best case the company only pays for one.
Did the same - took a sabbatical. The main thing is to come up with a cool story of what you did.
Maybe he creates a successful business and never has to work for anyone else again, maybe not. Either way the author will have had the valuable experience of not only trying to build a business, but also living life on his own terms - something that we give up (often without realizing it) when we sell ourselves to the corporate world.
I'm 10 months into my sabbatical and have spent the last 8 months living in countries/continents I'd never been to, learned about different cultures, improved my Spanish (now trying to learn Russian), met a ton of people, and grown enormously as a person.
Career-wise and financially was this a good decision? Probably not (at this point at least). But I wouldn't trade any of this for the world. Had I spent another year living in the same damn city doing the same work that I was bored to death of, I might've jumped off a bridge or something (not really, but in hindsight I was depressed without really realizing it).
I will now shift gears towards working on my own project(s). If it works out - great, I will be living my dream. If it doesn't work out - no problem, I'll figure it out - even if I have to return to the U.S. and find a job again. On my deathbed I'm not going to regret taking a year off to travel the world when I could've spent that year continuing to work a job I was no longer passionate about.
One of the things I've completely internalized from my travels is that I have no interest in the corporate rat race. I don't care about "career ramifications" because that's not a ladder I want to devote my life to climbing. Last night I hung out with a 21 year old from the hostel who's making $6k/month from online businesses working 1 hour/day, and has spent the last 1.5 years living abroad (I never met these kind of people when I was working my 9-5). That is my dream - not being a tech lead at Google (I don't need $6k/month either, $1.5k/month and I'm good).
In essence, the sabbatical drove home the point that I had been climbing the wrong ladder. So even if I have to eventually go back to the job market, I will be targeting totally different jobs, and my mindset towards work, money, and life in general is totally different. Before I was living in a permanent state of delayed gratification, saving money with no clear vision for what I was saving it for. Now I have a better idea of what I want out of life. Or maybe I just have more confidence to go out and chase what I want when in the past I would've simply fantasized about it.
At the end of the day I'd rather try and fail then have lived a safe boring life slaving away in some job I don't care about being depressed and wishing I had the balls to live life on my own terms and go after the life I want.
More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for your career? It sounds like you've had a great time but we don't know how this materially affected your career.
What about your sabbatical has made your career better now that you've done it? All I've seen is that you've open sourced a Hugo theme, read a few books, and you worked on a side project. Sounds like something plenty of people do with 40 hour workweeks.
As for your other point, does the best thing for a career have to make it _materially_ better? For me personally, the time off and self-reflection has been a better learning experience than if I hadn't quit, especially the ideas regarding agency and productivity, and these are things that will stay with me into whatever I do next.
I don't doubt that people with 40 hour workweeks can do the little that I've done, but if you see the goals that I set out for myself these were just a minor aspect of what I wanted to accomplish.
I don't doubt taking a sabbatical was good for you in various ways, but your career is probably not one of them as of now.
I've taken numerous lengthy sabbaticals, and find them the only way to maintain anything resembling a fair work:life balance. But I am under no delusions of them being good for my career, they're practically explicitly anti-career - I deliberately walk away from the competition for extended periods of time. I've just chosen to not care, because I prioritize other aspects of my life differently than one who lives to work.
To be fair, he says the exact same thing in his opening paragraphs. I think there's value in people sharing their experiences, even if it isn't directly applicable to 99% of the population.
I agree with your other points though. It sounds like he's happy with his decisions for personal-fulfillment reasons. He didn't do a good job of explaining how it advanced his career.
Saying that it's the "best thing I've done in my life" is way too dramatic, but at this point in my career it has been the best thing I've done because of how much I've grown personally.
I don't consider myself a good writer so your point is very helpful.
Despite the misleading title, I still enjoyed the read.
Watched all if breaking bad, did stuff like that. No achievements. Its nice to just rest. With kids there is still a lot to do. It feels like no job + kids is enough to keep me fulfilled if I had unlimited money.
Most people 18-25 can.
First, tons of people at those ages actively burn tons of money on BS like a useless college degree (and not even the kind that lands you an actual job). Not doing anything would be an improvement for them (and cost less).
Second, you can do that with no money at all (tons of people do it on $5 a day style, or getting some work where they travel to pay for the costs, or just using one of the several of networks where you can exchange places for free, etc.). I know lots of people at that age that work for a few months and live off that for the rest -- and I'm not talking about making a full yearly wage on those months, they just live on little. When you're young a futon and a few pieces of stuff will do. (I actually know older people living like that too -- in cultures where not following some career and making do with little is not considered "white trash" or "hippie", e.g. in the countryside in Europe and so on).
Also, you seem to be harshly criticizing the author and what he done in this span, but how are your choices working for you? Not great from what we read in your comment.
Fallback is important though; that is the "if I run out of money, seriously, then what do I do?"
There's a huge different between a $5/day lifestyle and a fallback to your parents basement vs a $5/day lifestyle and a fallback to, well, I guess I'll be living on the street.
The difference in cognitive load and stress between the two is staggering. Having a fallback is a very privileged position to be in.
Most entrepreneurs don't want to admit they can fallback to a parent's basement somewhere as it kind of kills their image.
Those without college degree have scrappy jobs if they have them and those with degrees as you said are in debt. Worst off are those with college debt but who did not finished college.
Nevertheless, young people without degrees can't really reasonably abandon their life.
How? That's $150 a month, I'm not sure if you can even find a place to live with that money.
It's far better to be positive. For example a good friend of mine founded a successful crypto shop. At the time, I thought the idea was stupid. However I didn't say that, I told him I wanted him to succeed and I was happy to listen to him describing what he wanted to do and how he was going to do it. Now our friendship is even closer and he's doing great. While it's unlikely given his personality, if I had been negative I might have talked him out of a big success and that isn't what good people do.
