Ask HN: Should I quit my nice startup job to travel the world? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I quit my nice startup job to travel the world?

1 pointdogsandwater4 comments

I'm a young engineer who dropped out of school and moved to SF to pursue my startup. Although that didn't work out, I did find another promising startup that I'm really enjoying working at and am learning a lot from, although I'm getting paid a pretty low salary for a developer. After a year, my lease is now ending and I'm thinking about taking 9 months off to travel and take the last class needed to finish my degree before I get weighed down with even more stuff and responsibilities. I've wanted to do this my entire life, but I'm super nervous about leaving a job I actually enjoy, losing my connections, and the difficulty in resettling in SF. I've spent the last 3 years of my life working almost every waking moment and can barely imagine a life without work now. I'm a little worried I'll get bored if I'm not working. Has anyone done this early on in their career? Should I do something that really excites me or should I hang on to a job that I really enjoy?

Without knowing the specifics of your situation, I'd offer this general advice:

As you get older, long term international travel gets more and more difficult. It can be very valuable as an input on your perspective and worldview, which has long term benefit for ambitious people. PG addresses this in his lecture on doing a startup:

"You can do things in your early 20s that you can't do as well before or after, like plunge deeply into projects on a whim and travel super cheaply with no sense of a deadline. For unambitious people, this sort of thing is the dreaded "failure to launch," but for the ambitious ones it can be an incomparably valuable sort of exploration. If you start a startup at 20 and you're sufficiently successful, you'll never get to do it. "

I largely agree with his perspective. If you are naturally finding yourself at a 'break' (eg, finishing your degree) and you know it's something you want to do, I'd recommend doing it given it will only get harder to do later. Maybe if you aren't fully confident, try limiting your risk by committing to travel for a shorter period of time (eg, 3 months) then re-evaluate the value you feel you're getting from the travel to see if you should extend for another 3 months.

Traveling is hard to quantify the value for because you often won't see the benefits for a long time - it will often subtly affect your perspective in small but important ways over decades by increasing your general human empathy and understanding. And given you have a very employable degree, you will probably not have trouble finding work on your return, which is the biggest risk.

Thanks for the advice and that excerpt. As someone who is pretty career/productivity focused it's been difficult justifying doing something so 'frivolous'. I do feel like most of the people I've interacted with over the past couple years have been startup/tech people, so hopefully he's right that having some completely different experiences will pay off in intangible ways

Do you have enough cash on hand to survive (travel, emergencies, pay higher insurance rates and taxes) without using credit or loans for 12+ months (9 months out, 3 months back to get a job or start a business)? If so this is a risk you can probably take. If you do not have the cash on hand it is a risk you should probably not take at this time.

If you do not have the cash on hand I would recommend getting a job that pays a decent rate for a developer so you can save up to travel. If your benefits are right you can normally travel two to three weeks or more during the year but the travel would be much more emerging if you could actually take the 9 months to do so to enable you to do more.

If you do have the cash on hand I would recommend you plan your travels and be on your way. Make sure you keep up on technology and keep your mind sharp if your plan is to go back to San Fransisco, CA (This is what the SF means, right?). As you know things move very quickly in the hot tech areas in the USA (Silicon Valley, DC Metro, San Fransisco area, NYC area, etc.)

Thanks for the input! I do have quite a bit saved up for the trip itself but I may need to work part time finishing my degree or find somewhere that pays a relocation stipend to make the upfront payments on these SF apartments and give myself somewhat of a buffer. As for staying sharp, I'm entertaining the idea of bringing my macbook air and taking some small breaks to learn Android development (I've been doing iOS for 3+ years now). One of my main concerns is sidetracking my career, so maybe I could turn it into a net positive career move?

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