The Five Year Itch | Hacker News Reader

The Five Year Itch

jacquesmattheij.com

98 pointsswombat65 comments

This is only based on how I read the article, and may not be the case at all, but it seems the OP comes across as rather selfish.

He gets bored and so he makes his wife and kids uproot their lives and go somewhere else. I've been in the same job and place for 15 years because it's steady work and place for the wife and kids. I often get bored with it, but deal with it - do different projects on the side, et al.

Again, just my take on it. For all I know the family enjoys it. Too often I read articles on guys with families that are more worried about themselves than their families and it just bugs me.

Oh yes, selfish, that's me to a 'T' ;)

Of course it would never enter into my head to discuss these plans ahead of times with those involved and people are being dragged screaming and kicking to the furthest corners of the earth. And I pick the spot, every time.

Really, you couldn't be more wrong, if you want we can take this up via email (I've tried to keep my family members and private life out of my blog / public life as much as possible but I can see that in this case that isn't really doable without potentially giving the wrong impression).

The spot was picked by my s.o. in two cases and by me in the others, but we all agreed on roughly where we'd move ahead of time, in so far as agreement from small children counts they had a voice too, but if there would have been strong disagreement we'd definitely not have done any of this. For sure we enjoyed it and looking back there are definitely no regrets.

Again, I don't know the full story, just based on what and how I read the article. If your family enjoys it, then by all means it sounds great :]. Heck, maybe it's even better for them than sticking around.

It's just like I had mentioned, it seems more people these days think that they are privileged and they're too self centered and not seeing what their true role should be. It's an issue that bothers me and it's simply how I read the article.

"if you want we can take this up via email" sounded so much like "do you want to take this outside" ;-)

That's exactly what I thought. "Say that to my face, not online and see what happens."

It's a good day for getting things interpreted in the worst possible way. It is more because I don't want to spill the details of my family in an open access forum, not because I want to start a fight. Blogging about generalities is one thing, this is getting pretty specific.

I meant it more in the sense that's it's the online version of "taking it outside" and it sounded funny :p I wasn't meaning to highlight unintended interpretations.

I think a guest post by your spouse would be a really interesting read.

My wife and I are about 10 years behind you[1] and I have changed industries a few times now based on a similar itch. It's good to see the perspective of someone who has already gone down the path we're treading.

Your "skillz" also seem to greatly exceed my own[2] even with a 10 year head start. So I'm not sure how transferable your advice/viewpoint are to my family's life journey. Even so, I think it a pretty valuable read.

Please consider having your spouse and/or children give their perspective on this nomadic lifestyle.

[1] Age-wise. I'm not sure about where our kids are in relation to yours. Our oldest is approaching 10. Are yours older?

[2] Or maybe you filter out your failures preferring to post positive-only articles?

Oldest is 19. Re. 2, I've blogged extensively about my failures so I don't think I only post positive articles.

>Of course it would never enter into my head to discuss these plans ahead of times with those involved and people are being dragged screaming and kicking to the furthest corners of the earth. And I pick the spot, every time.

From the article:

>So on average every 5 years I pick up those that are dear to me and some stuff and move and/or shift into a new line of business.

I'm sure you can forgive him for thinking that, considering the way it was phrased in the post.

Especially when you follow that line up by saying how hard it is on others in your life, but it's natural to you. And on top of that, the major reason for all of this is simply that you apparently get bored.

I'm sure things are not as one-sided as your blog post suggests, but the way it was written lends itself to misinterpretation.

I think you're judging a person you don't know, and that is unfair. If you look at the list of the places he's moved, it's mostly the Netherlands with two (back to back) stints in Canada. That doesn't sound exactly like a nomadic globetrotter, and every five years isn't that often.

As a counter point, I moved around quite a bit when I was a kid, I never lived in one place for more than a year from when I was 12, and before that, I had lived in 5 different houses (4 of which were in the same city).

It wasn't until I was 36 or 37 that I stayed in one house for 3 years. Then I was on the move again, and I still continue to move every year.

I don't have a wife or kids to slow me down, but it is just a way of life that many people can't appreciate. The OP is stable compared to many of us.

I think this is an unreasonable judgement, which only reflects the fact that the OP has made different life decisions than you have.

Bringing your family stability is a noble cause, but OP's children get to experience a breadth of culture (among other benefits), for which they will surely be grateful.

What makes you so sure that his family would prefer not to move?

Your argument isn't any stronger than his would be if he accused you of being selfish for denying your family the opportunity to see more of the world.

In an exercise thread yesterday, he talked about helping rebuild his neighbor's house. :-) But in your defense, I also read the article as slightly selfish. Perhaps an explanation of how his sig other enjoys the challenges and how they are teach their kids to adapt to change would have changed the tone.

I suppose this also depends on what you consider 'default'. Who says the default should be to stay in one place for decades? Leaving and staying each have advantages and disadvantages, but as far as I can tell neither has proven to be generally the 'best' option.

In fact, my experience is that those who do move around generally seem to lead a happier and fulfilling life, but that's just my experience perhaps.

My point is that staying behind for 'stability' could be equally selfish. Uprooting your life in itself is not selfish, however the way you do this could make is to.

Hmmm, I can understand getting bored and switching jobs as a way to stay stimulated, or to take on the "opportunity of a lifetime" that comes along every so often, but when there are other innocents whose lives are interrupted as a result, my empathy ends there.

Once we had children, before any were in school, my wife and I picked a place where we could reasonably expect to stay until they were finished with school, and we're still here.

Their lives are more important than mine (my amusement ranks far below), and in my opinion, a stable childhood provides the foundation to take some risk as an adult.

Whilst I did the same as you, who are we to say that this is best for all families? I'm sure some would adapt and thrive whilst others would be desperately unhappy.

I have to agree, based on the anecdotal evidence of my children. Moving several times, just in the same city, had a marked effect on them. It was subtle though, and unexplained, until we talked to the pediatrician about behavior. He made it very clear that children require a strong sense of home and stability for their emotional growth and security. Any sort of move can disrupt that easily.

Was this a negative effect? I stayed in the same place as a child but I could see a major benefit from experiencing different places and having to learn how to interact with new people. it wouldn't be easy as a child but there could be some lo g term benefits.

My parents moved us to the US when I was younger, then to England, and finally back to Israel.

There are pros and cons to moving around. Experiencing other cultures, learning new languages, and so on are all things I'm very glad happened. On the flipside, having less permanent friends, starting to study in another language when you're 13, and so on, are fairly hard.

I don't think I'm able to honestly bet on which of these is better for children.

The "less permanent friends" issue is probably lessened - though absolutely not eliminated - by the modern communications environment.

I don't think it's our place to determine what is best for OP's children. Nobody has a monopoly on what it takes to be a good parent.

As a former mitary wife, I am kind of personally offended that this is the top voted comment here. Being rooted in place like a plant is not the only means to raise healthy, secure kids. Ugh. I really wish this were downvoted to hell. I am so annoyed at feeling compelled to reply to this shit.

I upvoted you. My apology for any offense. I think we're talking about two different issues.

Frequent moving and deployment are part of the job description with which you were associated; nothing arbitrary or for-amusement about it.

The author declared the relative arbitrariness of his moves yet admitted, "this is extremely hard on others..." This apparently didn't carry sufficient weight in his decision process to change the outcome.

Relating my own philosophy and how I implemented it is just one anecdotal opinion to share in a discussion - not a condemning proclamation nor a cited case study backing it up as what's best for children.

Thank you for the upvote and have one in return, but, oh, boy, are you opening up a can of worms that I am sure all of hacker news does not want to get into.

In a nutshell, the military was my ex's dream job that he thought I would not support. He pursued it anyway. (Reality: I supported it. It was his mother who was against it.) He liked to play the martyr card and act like deploying was some huge personal sacrifice for the good of the family -- while telling me I could not go off to college as it would destroy the marriage -- but it absolutely was not true. He loved that shit and taking care of his family was not a super high priority of his.

Second, most heterosexual relationships go (physically) where he wants to go/where his career takes him. That is the norm. That is not some aberration on the part of the OP.* It is part of why it has been relatively easy post divorce for me to keep telling attractive men that I found hot to take a fucking hike. I want a life. I am not interested in moving back in to some fucking gilded cage. I know the stats. Most marriages are strongly skewed towards supporting male privilege at female expense. Men and women alike are typically oblivious to the degree that this is true, so I get a lot of hatred when I start talking about such things.

Anyway, that's the short version. I have done lots of reading over the years related to such issues, so I know for a fact it is not peculiar to my (former) marriage. We can just agree to disagree here and not pursue some ugly bloodbath that will only make me a lightening rod for controversy, a role I loathe.

Have a great day.

* Edit: Which the OP states he did not do anyway, so let's not give me shit over that. It suggests he's less of a selfish asshole than your average guy, possibly not a good observation to make in a predominantly male forum, exactly why I don't really want to open this can of giant, writhing worms. Ugh.

During the past 6-7 years I lived in: Spain (10 months), China (4 months), Italy (1 year), Denmark (1.5 years), Germany (2 years) and now I am in Belgium.

Lately I was considering settling down a bit. However, I am pretty sure if somebody comes offering me a job in Patagonia, Chile or similar I would live tomorrow. As the OP says, it weights more on others than you, you get used to it at some point. The only real problem is rebooting your social life every time, especially if you end up in a small city: if you are introvert, you need to get a hell out of your comfort zone to make this work.

Anyway, my question to the OP: how did you do this financially? I mean, were you always able to get into a good position and keep building up savings? If so, was this due to your technical skills, networking or other? I am asking because in my line of work (finance-controlling) having manual work in the CV would be quite detrimental.

The consultancy / software licenses / services / whatever I'm doing thingy has so far brought more than enough to finance all this and several 10's of manyears of employee salaries to boot. I could have saved a lot by staying in one place and doing just one thing though, that is definitely something to consider. Being born at the right time (just in time to pick up the PC revolution) didn't hurt either, nor does having marketable skills and a pretty disciplined attitude towards hard work and getting your hands dirty.

I often joke that I'm on a decade long vacation and it really feels like that some days but there is plenty of hard work in between.

Similar experience: since leaving my country (Germany) I have been 1.5 yrs US, 3 yrs UK, 1 yr Mexico, now for 3 yrs in Spain. Even though I do feel lonely sometimes due to culture difference and language barrier I love it and cant imagine going back, I'd rather go somewhere else. However, my wife wants a baby and is pretty much nailed to her job so I prepare myself to settle at least for a while. Btw I'm 43

My work experience : Italy(6 months, I'm Italian), USA (5 months), UK (1.5 years), Spain (4 years running).

I agree that the main problem is rebooting your social life... finding a job (at least whithin Europe, for a European, employed in tech) in my experience is not.

Apart from the first two jobs, derived from projects I started at the end of college, I have always applied to job offers online, went to interviews etc...

Thanks for sharing your experiences guys. Finding work for you all is probably easier than for me. Going back, I would have taken a different path, but as of now, even if I do know some web development and python/R for statics/data analysis, it is pretty hard for me to move away from finance (which I also like, by the way), thus I find it pretty hard to have that kind of life and CV.

Basically, since I joined the workforce, my company pretty much decides where I will be. If I live this company, it's going to be another one deciding for me. This kind of work ties you to companies much more than yours it seems. Which is one of the big cons of this job, the pros are there too of course, but I am in a period of life where I actually envy people that can move like you do.

The best corporate presentation I saw at my time at IBM was a speaker with a bio on the first slide which highlighted his career history. While I can't remember the specifics, it pretty much looked something like this:

1995 - 2000: Role at company X

2000 - 2005: Role at company Y

2005 - present: Role at IBM

We were half way through 2009.

Probably wouldn't be a bad time to leave IBM back then.

That's funny, I consider myself a nomad and have almost your introduction word-for-word as my bio on my website. Your article portrays the moving activities well and a few things I haven't tried (the new house stuff). I am surprised to find this is you considering some of the physical projects you have written about (windmill, gas station, RV, etc).

The stuff accumulation is a big one for me too. Before I started this lifestyle definitely was doing all I could to save things and then I just realized that most of it I never touch so I took the nostalgia things, took pictures, and then donated to charity. That way my stuff's "soul" can give happy memories to others.

If I were to have one question to ask the author based on that blog, it would be 'What job/career does his other half have?'.

I have pretty much free-roam of where I am, considering I work remotely and have flexibility over which hours I work due to clients in numerous time zones, however my girlfriend is a micro-biologist which makes where she can work rather limited to Universities and other research locations.

> What job/career does his other half have?

During all this we worked together running the same business in various stages/products for 15 years. She's currently a successful glass works artist: http://www.worldinglass.nl/Site/Afbeeldingen/Afbeeldingen.ht...

Your shelf-life so to speak at a potential opportunity is more averaged around 3.5-4 years. I'm not sure if you're open about this to employers but it made me think of a somewhat typical question of "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "Anywhere but here!" is likely not the response they're looking for even though it would be entirely accurate.

Personally, I don't really care. Our skillset and drive doesn't keep us in long, tenured positions. Having an upward ceiling of 5 years at any company is truly impressive. Most developers I know cap themselves at 1 or possibly 2 years.

I wanted to bring this up primarily to highlight that if an employer of software developers is looking to retain talent for > 5 years they have an extremely hard road ahead of them. The number of Googlers (a random but high metric) that are still there after 5 years is probably much less than most of us think. I'm sure Google has the data to prove or disprove the theory but I'm not sure it's accessible to the public. That's not to say it can't be done but it shouldn't be the same push as other industries seem to require. Those industries tend to have skills that are highly specialized where that much knowledge gathered over time is not only prized but highly required. Our "knowledge cap" seems to reset quite often in comparison and our base understanding of "computer sciency things" tends to transcend the technology we're using those things on.

"After five years in one place it is amazing how much stuff gets collected."

Indeed! And it's hard to stay organized. Paul Graham wrote an essay on this: http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html, which I found worthwile to translate into Dutch: http://www.michielovertoom.com/articles/paul-graham-spullen/

It's probably my favorite of pg's essays, no wonder has been translated in several languages.

I also found 'The Blub Paradox' (part of Beating the Averages) eye-opening. http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

I know the feeling, and yes, it itches!

Every red-blooded engineer wants to switch technologies and find new challenges every few years.

So, a few months ago, we launched a site to scratch the itch for ourselves and others who are experiencing it.

Guess what domain name we chose? It's http://FiveYearItch.com

Perfect!

I hope it helps!

Currently there are about 1 million people who do this on about as regular a basis and they are the members of the US Military. So it's not as rare as it would seem. It is a little different, but in reality not so different as to not be applicable.

For most of us, it is exactly what we want to do - we like to see new places and get new experiences and it often is great. The toll is also pretty tough for our families and there are plenty of stories and studies about those impacts. For those who like it and it works, great, but often even if kids say they like it, there are things that they don't talk about that impacts them regardless.

I find this post inspiring. For years I've been struggling with un-named itch, now you put forth exactly what makes me tick. Will follow your steps. Thanks for sharing, Jacques :-)

We are currently at the looking to move phase having come to the agreement that, yes, we are moving, and have informed our friends and family. What we haven't done is figured out where to go from here. Traveling seems to come up a lot in our family discussion, so we've agreed to do that for 6mo-1.5years. But after that it is the logistics of what to bring, what sell, what to store, and where to keep it.

We've begun to give/sell our things, throw out things when they're worn out or broken (we have a dining table with no chairs). Scan and shred the inordinate amount of paperwork a family accumulates over a decade.

Also at the end of our travels we're not sure where we want to be. Wife is EU passport holder and I am a US passport holder so either side of the pond won't be a problem as far as visas are concerned. But, those places are not where we want to live, yet. Places we're interested in moving to are AUS, NZ, and SA (costa rica, and chile for my wife). But we're not really sure we'd ever want to live there in the long term, either.

I'm curious if there is a short term visa that allows you to "sample" a country before making a big commitment. Most of the ones I've found appear to be for students under 30.

Tourist visa are good for 90 days usually, you can ask for extensions once you get close to the end of your 90 days. Some countries (Germany for instance) have special permits during which you can figure out what you want to do, provided you are self supporting in the interim. Once you have a permit like that for one EU country you can go to any other (though formally you have a deal with the Germans).

Tourist visas wouldn't be adequate in our case. For example, I had some friends move to Barcelona, rent an apartment, find jobs, open a bank account and travel every weekend to different regions in Spain. Then after 2 years they decided to move to Melbourne on a holiday work visa for 2 years. Then after that they moved to the south of France.

In each case they had a work permit (one is a French national, so France doesn't count) based on some work holiday scheme. But a few of these have age or education limits.

Our next adventure is to buy a boat and circumnavigate. First we have to buy a boat, then we have to equip it to cross oceans.

BTW, Berlin does appeal to me, and I recently discovered my wife speaks a little German. What is it with the french not wanting to speak any other language?

For work you'd indeed need a bit more than a tourist visum but if you just want to get a feel of a place to see if you'd like to grow some more roots then it may work if your income stream does not require invoicing others. I was on a work visum in Canada employed by a company that I held the shares in, applied for permanent resident status and never even got the papers before we decided to move again.

The French speak plenty of languages, especially the younger generation. You may have to prod them a bit and if you speak a little bit of French that may help to grease the wheels.

Chile. And they will even give you money to get a startup going.

http://startupchile.org/

Like most geeks I have far too much self-doubt to consider a start-up alone. Every time I have an idea I can pick it apart technically in minutes in my mind (Dunning-Kruger effect).

Really, who needs online file synchronization when a USB key and rsync are perfectly fine!

Try a couple of things that you'd normally discard and see if a bad idea doesn't lead to a good one once you get a bit of user feedback.

I have some IaaS ideas I've been kicking around but they are all capital intensive. The only way I can make it financially feasible is to build my own servers. And with no SLA or warranties I would basically have to live at the datacenter.

Have you ever thought of buying a boat to live?

Yes, but my s.o. wouldn't have it (it can get pretty cold in winter on a boat). The closest I've come to this is building a small RV (and I'm busy right now building an even smaller one).

Seconded, Kasten (1) produces some very cozy floating houses ;-)

[1] http://www.kastenmarine.com/plans_list.htm

Where there any challenges for your kids or any advice you can give to other families trying this? My initial feeling is that uprooting kids is not a good thing, but it clearly works for your family.

Buy in is key, if you don't all agree on where to go in principle and you can't feel all of you that the new place is one where you could be happy then simply don't do it. The world is large enough and there are plenty of options. Our origins were a factor in the early moves (Poland, Netherlands), the way the business developed in the later ones (Canada). The final move back to NL was because we liked the school system and some other infrastructure here better than the one where we were at the time.

But we'd have moved somewhere regardless of origins, business, schools or infrastructure and even today I'm quite sure this isn't the end of the story just yet.

It really depends on how old your children are. We knew that our third move, to a third country/language, when my daughter was about to turn five, would be our last for a while. Chomsky's "critical age" says that up until six kids can take the culture and language as their own. It falls off pretty rapidly after that.

It's sometimes hard for me and my wife (we actually have a three-year itch :-) but we're really lucky to have found a good location and overall we're all really happy here (southern France).

I grew up in a military family which meant moving every few years. I'm pretty happy to have had that experience. I see my friends now sometimes pass up what would be great opportunities because they're too uncomfortable with the idea of making a big change. Moving certainly can be difficult, but it also makes you more adaptable and becomes easier subsequent times you do it. I was lucky in that our moves mostly lined up well with switching schools anyway (e.g. going from elementary to middle school), so that made it easier. Plus, as a nerdy kid in school, it had the positive side effect of getting to start over. And my brother who is very sociable became even more so as he had more and more practice making new friends. I think it's probably one of the reasons I'm a startup founder today. Taking a risk of leaving a high paying job to start a company didn't seem quite as scary when I'd made big jumps to new things in the past and had them turn out just fine. I'm sure moving would be tough for your kids at first, but it's also a great opportunity to teach them how to adapt to change.

Working in the same 100km radius is hardly "nomadic." The only real move the author did was to Canada, before relatively quickly moving back home.

Amsterdam, Poznan -> 1065 km, Amsterdam, Toronto -> 5500 km, Toronto, St. Josephs Island -> 650 Km, St. Josephs Island, Exloerveen -> 6000 km, Groningen, Landgraaf -> 300 km, Groningen, present -> another 300 km.

It's a bit more than a 100 km radius, I can assure you and whether or not you think 5 years is quick is up to you.

Here's mine (without distances)

Toronto->LA->Toronto->St.Catharines->Ottawa->Toronto->Whistler->New Jersey->Whistler->Frisco(Colorado)->Vancouver->Whistler->LA->Whistler->Santiago->Sydney(AU)

Whistler is pretty awesome, I can see why that one keeps coming back :)

If you find yourself in or near NL let me know please.

The author doesn't speak about just changing jobs, he is talking about picking up his whole live and physically moving. Moving 100km may seem like nothing to you, but in the Netherlands, this means quite literally moving to the other end of the country, which is a lot in a country where most people aren't used to driving hundreds of kilometres daily or even weekly. The impact on one's lifestyle (family, friends, environment etc.) would probably be equivalent to moving to another state in the US.

People aren't used to driving 100km, but taking the train that distance is quite common. I've never lived in the Netherlands, but from what I understand it's even more compact and better connected than Denmark, and in Denmark people travel that distance pretty regularly, especially if they have friends/family somewhere. If you moved from Copenhagen to Odense (160km) or vice versa, it'd be a change certainly, but not a real rupture like moving to another country would be.

I've lived in the Netherlands for most of my life and you are right, it is quite compact and has decent public transportation, as long as you don't live in a big city or a town that is well connected to the rail network (which, should you wonder, a place like Exloërveen is not: https://www.google.com/maps?saddr=Amsterdam,+The+Netherlands...).

My point was more that despite the fact that 100km is not far, even in The Netherlands, it is still perceived as being really far.

To illustrate my point: I spent some time living in New Jersey, where despite it being one of most densely populated states in the US, people easily drive 50 miles or more after work to meet up with friends. Good luck getting Dutch people to do that regularly.

Moving relatively large distances within the Netherlands will definitely uproot your life quite a bit, though admittedly not as much as moving to a different country (at least, having done both, that's my experience).

It's "real" enough when you and your wife change jobs, your kids go to new schools, and none of you can no longer go out easily with the people you used to know.

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