Ask HN: Have you ever taken a 6-month to 1 yr break anytime during your career?

I backed the Oculus Kickstarter and decided VR was going to be big. I quit my games industry job, moved to a ski resort for 6 months and snowboarded and did a lot of VR experiments.

I decided I needed to partner with someone with domain expertise in an application area to really find a viable business model and ended up cofounding a VR surgical training company with an orthopedic surgeon I connected with on the Oculus forums.

Five years later we just passed 100 full time employees and the business is growing rapidly. I was lucky in how everything worked out but definitely think taking the time out was instrumental in getting to this point and it was a great experience anyway.

I wrote software at some of the biggest (including THE biggest) firms in the world, then took seven years off without writing a line of code. I worked as an independent cinematographer, for a pittance that never came close to paying the rent.

I was lucky to have maintained connections, one of whom called me at the right time with an opportunity to get back into the game at the same salary I would've likely have been making had I continued the whole seven years.

I had to bust my ass to learn a new language (Swift) and write a critical app for my new employer. But that's what I needed to make it interesting enough to bother. I'm still with that firm three years later.

Don't do things out of fear. It's a great market for devs right now (like it was 20 years ago), and that might not last... but if you have skills, they need to be plastic or you're a dinosaur anyway. So bank on them.

Yes, to ride a motorbike from Germany to Central Asia. At some point during the trip, the website I run became profitable enough to live from, so I'm extending that break until it's no longer possible.

I've won the lottery. There's no other way to describe it. Every day is Saturday. I wake up on most days deciding what I want to do. It rekindled my passion for programming. I travelled more, went on more bicycle rides, cooked more, and spent more time messing in the garage. I always have time for friends too.

The downside is constantly feeling that I am squandering that time, that I'm not adding enough bullet points to my life resume to justify my lifestyle. It's trivially easy to do things "next Saturday" when I have 7 times more of them, but I end up feeling like I should still use every single one of them.

Digital detox is extra important. I keep an eye on time spent on the computer. It's too easy to browse mindlessly for hours, instead of doing something rewarding and meaningful. The Internet is the biggest threat to my goals, and I try to keep it tamed.

Another problems is that my friends are still at work. They're busy, then tired. They're also not super interested to hear about my weekday adventures, obviously. It's a little lonely in that sense.

Career-wise, I am still writing code (an average of two commits a day), but not in a team context. My skills are still fresh. I'm still running a website too. I often get job opportunities through contacts, so I don't think I would struggle to find work.

I took around 6 months off and travelled for a while.

The travelling was great. I was out of the country for about 3 months and visited friends for the other 3. I filled my calendar during this and was constantly moving. I was in the best shape of my life by the end of it.

When I was done travelling, I came back and lived out of Airbnbs in the Bay Area until I found a job. This was really expensive, and gave me urgency in the job hunt. I was able to fully dedicate myself to job hunting, and interviewed at a lot of companies. This let me price my labor well and negotiate effectively as a result. No companies had a concern with the time off.

The income bump from the aggressive job hunting meant the 8 months didn't hurt me financially at all. This let me have an experience I'll remember for the rest of my life without much downside.

> At some point during the trip, the website I run became profitable enough to live from

What's that website if I may ask ?