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It's not so much the (closed) gaps, but the time since last job. The first job after you take a year off will be harder to get. After that, most people won't care.

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I don't think it matters as much as people here seem to think.

You're the current CTO of a unicorn looking for a more technical role with stability so you apply to be a staff+ engineer at Google. Now the opposite: you've taken a year off to take care of an elderly parent. In both cases, your resume is one of the lowest signals we have. You're going to need to pass that interview.

HR folks aren't even looking this closely as long as you have a resume with the right prior experiences. And almost none of these resume concerns matter with a referral.

All else equal, people with resume gaps are going to get sorted to the bottom of the pile. Maybe at the high end of the market, the FAANG staff level, there aren't enough applicants so it's not a big deal, and they'll get to those applications eventually. At the lower end of the market however, there's more competition and more likelihood that someone else from the top of the pile will get hired before they get down to the bottom.

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