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Comment by Mars008 | Hacker News Reader

> see an alternate reality, it helps to escape the bubble, for example, by spending time in a completely different culture

I'm at similar position now, need to make decision. The problem is after leaving IT world for a while it will be hard to get back. I'll have to change my life completely and discard all knowledge and expertise I have. That will be fun, interesting, eyes opening, etc, but no way back.

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I don't know you, don't know your situation, but this does not seem to match the experiences of many of my friends who left for a while and then came back. "Spent two years starting a restaurant" and "had to take care of my parents" were not blockers for getting another computer related job in due time. There are few truly irrevocable decisions in our life.

Now, the current job market makes this significantly harder than it was in the 2010's, but that's floating over all of us- if your company does an Amazon tomorrow, would you get a job as nice as you currently have? Maybe, maybe not.

In executive roles, your expertise really is in management acumen a lot of the time. But as an individual contributor--or adjacent--once you're out of a technical space for a few years, it's increasingly hard to get back in even if you've casually kept a finger in.

Exactly, the only way to stay current is to keep doing something at least half time. The good thing it doesn't have to be the same as prev job. Just keep brain working and learning.

Agree and disagree. Yes, keep brain working and learning of course. But, if you've dropped out of some space, you're going to be pretty rusty about what is currently going on.

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