Hacker News Reader

Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly why companies offer sabbaticals. It forces you to train people up on your five years of knowledge before you leave for 10 weeks.

OP could have just taken a long vacation.

View on HN

Maybe... but not all companies offer sabbaticals / extended leaves of absence with a way to come back.

No but if they don't then OP should have just put in for a long vacation to make themselves dispensable again.

Many American companies only give 2-3 weeks of combined sick + vacation time, which isn't really enough for "a long vacation" - furthermore, many companies have a "use it or lose it" and don't let you roll over PTO.

Long story short, it's impossible to take a long vacation while working for many companies.

In my experience companies offer may offer sabbaticals, HR may promote them, the documentation may be shiny; but it is career suicide for anoyone who hasnt already made it to the top.

Unlike leaving for a competitor and coming back for a 25% higher salary?

That there is a driven go getter (although not featured in the employee handbook).

The worker on sabatical is just a lazy bum who cant be bothered to go to work (or an hard working inspirational visionary C suite executive).

You must have worked for some awful companies. Everywhere I've worked the sabbatical was highly encouraged and the people came back refreshed and often got promoted soon afterwards.

Tech employees really do live in the most hilarious bubble.

Anyway, at my company (F500), if you take over 30 days unpaid, you need to reapply for your job.

I have never worked for a company that offers sabbaticals and I'm fairly certain I don't even know anyone that works for a company that offers them. I've never met anyone who has mentioned taking one either. AFAIC, they aren't even real.

14 Companies Offering Sabbaticals: https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/42136-2/

77 Companies that offer sabbaticals: https://fairygodboss.com/career-topics/sabbaticals-77-compan...

Sure the top 100 countries in the world offer them, and the other 50 million companies don't.

The list I posted is certainly not exhaustive. Many companies offer them for the exact reason I stated above -- so they don't come to rely on a single worker.

I actually took 3 months off and completely disconnected. A large portion of my direct team churned while I was off, a long time engineer took his own life, and I came back to the same issues but magnified.

Overall, it's not unreasonable to assume I'm a control freak and couldn't let projects go. However I'm a big proponent of letting fires burn and I delegate to no end. My particular type of stuck was exasperated by a corporate culture that has sales quotas pulled out of the air and implementation that was tracking time down to the minute because 90% had to be billable. In that culture there's no incentive or ability for individuals to learn.

10 week sabbatical - dare dream bigger, imagine a 52 week sabbatical </snark>

Reply on news.ycombinator.com