Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#41

Post by gfodor » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 6:39 PM UTC

TomaszZielinski wrote: post #39

In my opinion 1 year break is far too long. I find that 2 weeks of intensive self education every now and then is perfectly enough to stay up to date with the industry. Example: Last week I played with backbone.js & Co., this week I'm playing with the cutting edge stuff from HTML5. And next week I'll probably get another job for which I'll be able to use my new knowledge.

Learning the basics of new frameworks/libraries can be done in two weeks. Learning an entirely new field of study or research can be justified in terms of many months.

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#42

Post by Zarathust » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

bwarp wrote: post #34

georgieporgie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lack of health insurance isn't the issue it is in the US Here's what I've found about health insurance in the US: 1) It's not terribly difficult or expensive to get, at least, emergency coverage. In my 30s and single, I've found interesting plans for around $150 per month which cover simple doctor's visits a few times per year, with around a $10k deductible for 'real' stuff. This is very doable with reasonable financ…

In the UK, it costs $0, employed or not, previous neck injury or not, prior condition or not! No insurance required and it's always good care from experience. Healthcare is the last thing you want to have to worry about if you are unemployed.

Do you also have dental and eye (glasses) insurance covered by the government?

In Canada we don't, unless its really a health issue; your health is in peril if you don't treat your cavities or this kind of gravity.

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#43

Post by psykotic » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

siavosh wrote: post #7

How do future employers look at this time of unemployment?

I took a year off to travel before my current job. Best thing I ever did. Before leaving, I made sure I had several standing job offers. Get your foot in the door when you're in a stronger position. Do it for your own peace of mind if nothing else. You don't want to spend half of your sabbatical worrying about what to do when it's over.

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#44

Post by michaelmartin » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 6:53 PM UTC

Zarathust wrote: post #42

bwarp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, it costs $0, employed or not, previous neck injury or not, prior condition or not! No insurance required and it's always good care from experience. Healthcare is the last thing you want to have to worry about if you are unemployed.

Do you also have dental and eye (glasses) insurance covered by the government? In Canada we don't, unless its really a health issue; your health is in peril if you don't treat your cavities or this kind of gravity.

Under 18s do, and students can claim back the costs (At least for the dental, I'm not 100% on the glasses).

Adults don't get those 2 for free though, same as you.

I think the idea of taking the break to learn is a great one, but only if you have the purpose for it already decided. There is an endless amount of fascinating content on all sorts of topics available, but if I were to take a break to really brush up on a particular area, I'd want to know that when I was done, I'd be in a better position (For a particular job I want, startup idea to tackle etc.)

If it's more general though, I think it's harder to justify (of course, learning while building a personal project is a different scenario altogether!)

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#45

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 6:59 PM UTC

Zarathust wrote: post #42

bwarp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, it costs $0, employed or not, previous neck injury or not, prior condition or not! No insurance required and it's always good care from experience. Healthcare is the last thing you want to have to worry about if you are unemployed.

Do you also have dental and eye (glasses) insurance covered by the government? In Canada we don't, unless its really a health issue; your health is in peril if you don't treat your cavities or this kind of gravity.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#46

Post by psykotic » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 7:00 PM UTC

georgieporgie wrote: post #23

rhnoble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that still a thing? It's not like you'll be applying to law firms. I've found making yourself less available only makes your demand higher.

Unfortunately, yes. Employers, and the non-technical gateways in particular, still have the mindset of "reject for anything, weeding people out means I'm doing my job!"

Make yourself look so valuable that they wouldn't dream of rejecting you for some invented reason. If front-line resume screeners are the issue, get an existing employee to submit your resume and vouch for you and get buy-in from their boss. That way HR can't reject you on a flimsy basis.

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#47

Post by j45 » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 7:01 PM UTC

Forget a few months, I took a few years.

Of course survival is neccesary during that time. You could do any of the following:

1) Move home 2) Consult with a higher rate and work very part time (5-10 hours a week tops) 3) Move somewhere cheap with your savings 4) Consider going back to school or see if there's a program you can use for learning / training that will help.

I took a combination of #1 and #2, worked great.

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#48

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 7:01 PM UTC

mtrn wrote: post #37

spacemanaki wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely still a thing. Since the current top comment (from cletus) mentions working at Google I'll relate a story from when I interviewed there. From what I understand, I made it pretty far in the process (to the "executive committee review") and that's when they asked me to explain a gap in my resume. They pressed me for a detailed breakdown of what I did during the gap and the reasons behind it, and said t…

> It is absolutely still a thing. A bit of a pity.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#49

Post by rhnoble » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 7:03 PM UTC

spacemanaki wrote: post #25

rhnoble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that still a thing? It's not like you'll be applying to law firms. I've found making yourself less available only makes your demand higher.

It is absolutely still a thing. Since the current top comment (from cletus) mentions working at Google I'll relate a story from when I interviewed there. From what I understand, I made it pretty far in the process (to the "executive committee review") and that's when they asked me to explain a gap in my resume. They pressed me for a detailed breakdown of what I did during the gap and the reasons behind it, and said t…

Jeez, good to know. As mfalcon mentioned, freelancing would be a good fallback, but you'd still have to talk about what kind of work you were doing etc.

Re: Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study?

#50

Post by varelse » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 7:20 PM UTC

Did it 12 years ago after a tiny windfall from stock options...

During that time I launched one of the first distributed computing projects and almost finished porting a console game to Java. At that point, I made the decision that getting paid is good and went back to work.

More recently, I took a month off after working briefly at Google nearly sapped my will to live. But in this case, I already had the next and better gig lined up.

But I made the call that the first hour of every day from then on would be devoted to reading tech books. In just a few months I went from crusty niche engineer to working knowledge of Javascript, Python, Django, GWT, and HTML 5 and I'm already applying all of it. Ironically, I think if I had gone into google with this in my head, I would have had far more opportunities made available to me instead of the wretched allocation that was my only choice.

(Now if any googlers are about to chime in about the smoke blown up one's patootie at orientation that it takes ~6 months to come up to speed there, I was told point blank by my manager that rule only applies to NCGs and that I was already falling short by not having come up to full speed in 2 to 3 weeks)