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

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

#21

Post by rainygold »

nicbou wrote: post #15

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…

I'm curious as to how you monetised the site? Your site would have been so useful when I moved to the city a few years back.

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

#22

Post by luxurytent »

I'm on a 3 month paternity leave right now. I had a rough idea of what projects I wanted to complete but so far, it's been full throttle with my two kids (one being an infant)

I don't expect to get much done apart from enjoying the summer with the kids, tbh :-)

It has been nice so far, though.

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

#23

Post by muzani »

I sold a company, bought an Alienware, a proper desk and chair, wrote up a bunch of Java templates, learned Kotlin, found that templates were not worth the effort. I bought an expensive ergonomic keyboard, realized that my typing style was all wrong and spent a month correcting it. I took on freelance jobs that were well paid and impossible, then returned the money when it was clear why nobody else took the jobs. I tried to learn JS and Node but didn't. I tried to start a startup with an accelerator buddy salvaging old tech from the startup I sold, but it became clear why they "survived" for 4 years instead of growing exponentially. I tried to help the acquiring company of my startup get into it, but they were busy touring the world, and it became clear it was more of a prestige acquisition rather than a strategic one. The remaining time was spent playing XCOM 2 while my wife was at work, on the fancy new computer I intended to use for work.

A friend needed someone to tour the country teaching programming to educational institutions, so that's how I got back into tech. I picked up JS and Node by teaching it, somehow.

I'm not sure if the break helped my career but I got a lot of stuff out of my system. I also used Kotlin for Android before Google officially adopted it. It didn't change anything but it looks good on the resume.

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

#24

Post by smoorman1024 »

Yes, I had a 15 month non-compete after leaving a high frequency trading firm. I got married and traveled 3 months around Asia (Japan, Korea, S.E. Asia, Australia). We came back and did some domestic travel then she went back to work and I started to concentrate on job search and personal projects.

The travel was great and unforgettable. I would suggest taking it slow if you are thinking of something similar. We enjoyed places when we were there for at least a week or more. We both eventually got fatigued from the constant moving and planning. I would certainly do it again but I would try to spend more time in total and longer stays at fewer places.

When I got back and my wife was working again, I tried to stay physically active to take up as much time as possible. I committed to expanding some of my knowledge by working in languages and frameworks that I wasn't exposed to in my last position.

Even with the effort to keep active and learning there is still a lot of time on your hands when you are not working. This tends to get filled with more low potential pastimes like video games, TV, etc. Everyone I know who had a similar non-compete leaned on these pastimes more than they wanted to, but its really hard to fill that much time with productive activities. If you want to avoid your vices I would suggest setting out a plan for 3, 6, 9 months and revisiting it every month. I'm not saying you have to stick to your goals but you should stay long term oriented to be productive.

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

#25

Post by austincheney »

I have been on 5 military deployments to the Middle East of which 4 of those have occurred during my corporate software career.

I used my free time to write personal software. My second deployment gave me the opportunity to build the skills to move from a junior to a senior developer almost instantly. Otherwise, this extra practice has made me a stronger and more confident developer. Such confidence and portability has put me completely out of alignment with norms of corporate software developer practices which has made me a less attractive hire.

Now I am bored with life after watching people continuously fail in software in the same ways over and over again. After years of experience I have learned to just step back let those predictable failures happen, because the only thing worse is a solution that challenges people assumptions.

The only analogy I can think of is having a dumbass teenage child. You tell them not to do something stupid, they do it anyways, and then there are consequences. Then when you try to help they yell at you because their fragile ego is bruised, so you step back and let them fail but when they bitch at you about it you go do something else.

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

#26

Post by nicbou »

rainygold wrote: post #21
nicbou wrote: post #15

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…

I'm curious as to how you monetised the site? Your site would have been so useful when I moved to the city a few years back.

Moving to another city leads to a few necessary purchases. I help people find the right services and get a commission. That includes things like health insurance, a bank account and an apartment.

It's just good ol' affiliate marketing, except that I don't build the content around monetisation. I built the sort of honest website I wanted to find when I moved here.

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

#27

Post by lm28469 »

nicbou wrote: post #20
lm28469 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point during the trip, the website I run became profitable enough to live from What's that website if I may ask ?

allaboutberlin.com

Pretty nice, I live here and never heard of your site. I'll keep it in my favs

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

#28

Post by cl42 »

After my first startup, my CEO coach recommended I take a "transition period" that lasts as long as I want, to reflect, internalize the learnings from my experiences, and not rush into whatever I wanted to do next. I also used a book called "Transitions"[1] to help me with my reflection.

I took about a year off, in the end... I began by reading and running... I ran a few ultramarathons, which require 15-25 hours of training per week. I read a lot, particularly intense and complex books that require you to invest the time to actually read them and reflect on them.

In the second half of the year, I ended up traveling quite a bit -- Norway, China, Malaysia, Peru... Mainly to hike, but in every city I tried to set up meetings with startups and businesses to learn what the culture was like around work.

I think I learned more that year than in any year of my life.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZY23TS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

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

#29

Post by MyHypatia »

austincheney wrote: post #25

I have been on 5 military deployments to the Middle East of which 4 of those have occurred during my corporate software career. I used my free time to write personal software. My second deployment gave me the opportunity to build the skills to move from a junior to a senior developer almost instantly. Otherwise, this extra practice has made me a stronger and more confident developer. Such confidence and portability h…

>> the only worse thing worse is a solution that challenges peoples assumptions.

I was naive and thought that if I actually solve the problem, people would be happy to have the problem solved. It turns out, people just get really angry because they feel embarrassed and humiliated that they weren't the one to solve the problem.

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

#30

Post by gkfasdfasdf »

I took a 6 month leave of absence to go and study abroad. The subject of study was not technical at all, and I did zero programming while I was away. However, I didn't have any trouble getting back to work when it ended, and in some ways it helped as work felt fun and exciting again.
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