Ask HN: Taking a few months off? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Taking a few months off?

16 pointsthrowavay23 comments

Hello All,

I currently feel the burnout from a stressful project and commute that I have been doing for about 2 years. I started as a consultant with the idea that it would be a short gig, but ended up in a leadership role. I know this is something that is not to complain about, but this opportunity has afforded me an opportunity to take a few months off before looking for another job. I want the communities thoughts on quitting a job without something else lined up (based on my current experiences, it seems like the market is still quite ripe for developers) and how would future employers look at taking a few months off to myself. I would try and work on side projects and continue to learn the things I feel I am currently weak on, but won't get an opportunity to learn at my current project. Thanks All!

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I took half a year off and went travelling around Central and South America with a backpack, no laptop and no cellphone. I met loads of great people (other backpackers and locals), learnt some Spanish, visited old friends and new ones, saw the sights.

Best thing I ever did. It tweaked my brain somehow. I don't know how to describe it, but I certainly came back a different person.

I booked a ticket into Mexico City and another ticket home from Buenos Aires, and let my travels take me where it took me. I hooked up with people I got on with and we travelled together until our journeys went in different directions. It was surprisingly easy to just go wherever my whims took me.

10/10 would recommend to anyone.

+1. I quit my job at YouTube to travel around Latin America for half a year and just got back this month. One of the best decision ever.

To me as a hiring manager, a deliberately unemployed stretch looks very different from an unintentional one.

If you wanted to take time off - to find yourself;travel and enjoy being young; take care of family who were ill; recover from burnout; work on a side project; or just take time to carefully consider and select your next opportunity - and you could afford to do it, more power to you.

If you're an engineer who was trying to find a job for 3-6 months in the current climate and couldn't, that raises a red flag for me. Companies are falling all over themselves to hire engineers. If you're unhirable now, you're probably unhirable, period.

Note that my standard is a bit different for other specialties. The market for many other professions is much more employer-friendly and less employee-friendly. A customer service manager or a PR specialist who needed six months to find a job may be great to work with and great at their job but just battling a weak job market and absurd levels of competition and gets more leeway from me.

In any case, like a lot of things, it comes down to framing and telling a good story about it.

It depends on how much money you have saved. If you have a full year's living expenses then yeah, go for it. If not, reevaluate how you managed to work a contract for two entire years and not sock away a lousy ten grand :).

So assuming the answer to the above is "enough", then yes. Quit and take some time. Actually, I'd recommend booking a flight somewhere interesting, then quitting. Otherwise you run the risk of spending your downtime in your apartment reading HN in your boxers.

As to your career, it will survive just fine. My resume is more Gap than Work most years, and it has never hindered finding another gig. I actually found that traveling stocked me up with lots of good stories that could be pulled out during an interview to win "this sounds like a fun guy to work with" points. It turns out that those are actually scored higher than "this guy has memorized bubble sort" points in the minds of the people that will be making hiring decisions, so I always considered travel to be a net positive for the career.

Good luck!

Was in an extremely similar situation a few years ago and I kept asking the same question but continuing to burn myself out while I considered what to do.

Finally I just snapped and was unable to work or really communicate with anyone. I stopped showing up and felt horrible for my totally unprofessional exit. I had been barely sleeping and while sure the money was amazing I had no time to spend it.

In hindsight I should have worked on my communication skills and rapidly tapered down my efforts to a sane place. But I waited until I was just broken and had to bail.

However, it was in the end a much much needed rest. I took 4 months off work, got outside a ton, lost a bunch of weight, got my personal life and friendships recalibrated and jobs and work started showing up as soon as I was ready to work again.

Since then I have made healthier habits, and people actually respect me the same amount or more for having those habits. I also have learned tricks to still get an amazing amount of stuff done without burning out, which is largely communication, diet, exercise and sleep, all things I used to be awful at.

Take the break, it will be worth it!

Edit: and with 9 years of experience you already know how to learn, don't make the focus just more technology, at least make it a partial computer break.

" I kept asking the same question but continuing to burn myself out while I considered what to do." -This is exactly how I feel right now and fear I am headed towards blowing up at my current job because I am just so overstressed. I really like these people I work with and think I need some time away in order to salvage the relationships. Thank you so much for solid advice, you description is spot on to where I am at now and where I want to be.

Thank you!

Oh this is super easy. Take time off and work on something on the side too. I did this (still am) and am loving it! I'm also based back home with my parents so not burning through savings. Here's how it's all shaking out: (1) working on a cool idea with an amazing friend that may turn into a viable startup (fingers crossed but you never know), (2) taking road trips as often as possible, and (3) learning at a 10x pace compared to when I was employed. I'd rate my employability at around 5-10x what it was before. The only 'downside' is you end up loving your freedom so much that you commit to fighting tooth and nail to keep it :)

I think doing sabbatical is good for people. I have never been doing that before. Many articles mentioned that sabbatical is good for our health, mental, and mind. This is some articles that I would recommend to read:

1. This is what 365 days without a vacation does to your health http://qz.com/485226/this-is-what-365-days-without-a-vacatio...

2. The 2015 Sabbatical: Why We Should All Take a Month Off - https://www.riskology.co/sabbatical/

By the way, thank you for making this post. It reminds me that I have to take a month off because of my works.

I was in the same boat as you so I left my job last Thursday, and I'm flying to Bangkok in Thailand in 5 hours.

Excited yet terrified.

My worry has been that I am spending a portion of my life savings on this trip. But as my sister rightly pointed out, life savings are for major life events and this is definitely one of those events.

It's normal. I'd recommend joining a coworking space or getting involved with communities of some kind, going to meet ups, etc, as that will keep you social and may end up getting you work.

If you're interested at all in traveling, check us out: hackerparadise.org

I will definitely check that out, thank you for the advice, too!

Happy to see so much support for the extended trip. I'm 11 years in, so obviously would highly recommend it too!

I've actually incorporated travel and quality time off into my daily life: 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off. I wrote a post about my experiences here which you may find useful: http://remotejournal.com/blog/how-i-remote-work/http://remot...

I did it for 1 1/2 year.

From 01.01.2014 - 30.05.2015.

Got a season pass for the local swimming pool.

Learned to play the bass guitar.

Did some game development.

At the end I even invested some time in my masters degree (still not finished, meh :D)

Also, since I'm living polyamory I had much time to invest in my multiple relationships.

After it I started a new job where I make 20% more than in my old one AND can do all this from home, which wasn't much of a change since I did most of my masters degree team projects already remote.

I was in a very similar situation (nasty commute, 3 years of very stressful work with a lot of hours).

I left without a job lined up. It took me less than a month to find a new job that I liked. I had several offers and declined a number of them early on as I looked for something better.

You can certainly do it. I suggest you take two weeks off to relax and prepare for interviews, then hit interviews hard and keep practicing for whiteboard interviews.

How's your savings? How's your confidence about finding work again?

I've taken time off twice (eight months last time) and the recharge was great and worth it.

Thanks for the replies, I feel pretty confident. I have about 9 years experience now and 3 full years with Node.js. I've been doing some networking recently and there seems to be a lot of opportunities in my area. I feel like to take the next step, I would really like to take some time off and tighten up my skills, learn some react (I spent a year with Angular about a year ago) and some sys admin work to really round out my understanding of the full stack and get up to date with some of the latest and greatest. I can't do that currently working 10-12 hours a day.

Financially, I think I have enough saved to continue my current lifestyle for 4-5 months and still have an additional 4-5 months of savings, but I don't think I want to be off work that long, 2-3 months tops.

I'm glad to hear others have done it and haven't had issues explaining to potential employers. It seems like having this luxury would be the best way to land a new job because interviewing can be a full time job in and of itself. In the past when I've moved jobs, I haven't been very picky, I usually jumped for new opportunities as they arose when I wasn't really looking too hard.

I get it.

What would be the ramifications of taking the time off?

And of not taking the time off?

Best thing I did since starting work was take a few months off!

That time and space was invaluable for me, gave me the time to work on myself, to figure out what was important, and come back stronger.

I feel a lot better for doing it - but even ignoring that, I'm sure it has had a huge ROI on the missed income I 'spent' by not being employed.

If you need time, take time; there's really nothing wrong with that. That being said, you could always line-up your next gig, and push the start-date out 2 months; just to cover your bases.

It seems easier to get a job when you have when then when you don't have one.

Taking time off between jobs is very common and future employers won't think anything of it. The only question is whether you can afford the opportunity cost of not bringing in a salary.

Thank you for your reply, I could go 4-5 months without burning out too much of my savings and still be left with at least a 6 month run way. I'm beginning to think that taking time off and sharpening my skill set to things that peak my interest could have more value long term. It is an interesting proposition of weighing current opportunity cost vs potential down the road.

Thinking on doing a whole year "off" next year, off in quotes cause i would do some side projects and stuff along the way.

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