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Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

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Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#221

Post by nanomonkey »

paulcole wrote: post #30
dunkelheit wrote: post #17

Recently quite a few articles appeared on HN about escaping the rat race for a while and taking some time off. As someone who has a little savings and who is a bit burnt out I've been toying with the idea myself quite a bit. My biggest fear is that because I have only a vague idea of what I want to do with my time, I will fritter away my sabbatical, not accomplish much and end up pretty much at the same point (but wi…

> I have only a vague idea of what I want to do with my time, I will fritter away my sabbatical, not accomplish much and end up pretty much at the same point (but with less money). This is what I did for 2-3 years. I slept in everyday, went to the gym or for a run, rode my bike around, read books, went to movies, watched TV, shopped for groceries, cooked most of my meals, went on dates, and pretty much never left tow…

How did you get back into the job world? I'm in a similar situation and wondering how to spin my time off (which I've loved).

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#222

Post by ndh2 »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #101
adrianmonk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About accomplishment, maybe the thing you wanted out of escaping the rat race was to take a break from feeling like you constantly did have to accomplish something. As long as there isn't something seriously wrong (such as depression that leads to inability to enjoy pursuits), maybe that is OK. It could be important to be able to accept that you don't always have to accomplish something, and that your life doesn't ha…

Thanks for making this comment. You did a good job of putting into words what I have struggled to express to myself. I resonate entirely with your comment, but unfortunately for me, my problem is that it's a lot harder to actually put these things into practice. >About accomplishment, maybe the thing you wanted out of escaping the rat race was to take a break from feeling like you constantly did have to accomplish so…

First I want to thank you for your honesty. It is so refreshing to read, in this sea of self-promotion of Medium posts that go around here.

You may want to talk to a coach about this. I'm sure you can find someone specialized in finding jobs. You make it sound like you somehow let yourself down, and if that shimmers through in an interview, you won't leave a good impression. I think you need somebody to help you with finding a good way to frame this time in a better light. Not only for your next application, but also for yourself. What started as time off might have turned into involuntary unemployment, with all the negative weight that this brings.

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#223

Post by JDiculous »

Why is everybody so hung up on how it'll affect your career? As if everything in life must be rationalized by its impact on your career.

Maybe he creates a successful business and never has to work for anyone else again, maybe not. Either way the author will have had the valuable experience of not only trying to build a business, but also living life on his own terms - something that we give up (often without realizing it) when we sell ourselves to the corporate world.

I'm 10 months into my sabbatical and have spent the last 8 months living in countries/continents I'd never been to, learned about different cultures, improved my Spanish (now trying to learn Russian), met a ton of people, and grown enormously as a person.

Career-wise and financially was this a good decision? Probably not (at this point at least). But I wouldn't trade any of this for the world. Had I spent another year living in the same damn city doing the same work that I was bored to death of, I might've jumped off a bridge or something (not really, but in hindsight I was depressed without really realizing it).

I will now shift gears towards working on my own project(s). If it works out - great, I will be living my dream. If it doesn't work out - no problem, I'll figure it out - even if I have to return to the U.S. and find a job again. On my deathbed I'm not going to regret taking a year off to travel the world when I could've spent that year continuing to work a job I was no longer passionate about.

One of the things I've completely internalized from my travels is that I have no interest in the corporate rat race. I don't care about "career ramifications" because that's not a ladder I want to devote my life to climbing. Last night I hung out with a 21 year old from the hostel who's making $6k/month from online businesses working 1 hour/day, and has spent the last 1.5 years living abroad (I never met these kind of people when I was working my 9-5). That is my dream - not being a tech lead at Google (I don't need $6k/month either, $1.5k/month and I'm good).

In essence, the sabbatical drove home the point that I had been climbing the wrong ladder. So even if I have to eventually go back to the job market, I will be targeting totally different jobs, and my mindset towards work, money, and life in general is totally different. Before I was living in a permanent state of delayed gratification, saving money with no clear vision for what I was saving it for. Now I have a better idea of what I want out of life. Or maybe I just have more confidence to go out and chase what I want when in the past I would've simply fantasized about it.

At the end of the day I'd rather try and fail then have lived a safe boring life slaving away in some job I don't care about being depressed and wishing I had the balls to live life on my own terms and go after the life I want.

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#224

Post by paulcole »

nanomonkey wrote: post #221
paulcole wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have only a vague idea of what I want to do with my time, I will fritter away my sabbatical, not accomplish much and end up pretty much at the same point (but with less money). This is what I did for 2-3 years. I slept in everyday, went to the gym or for a run, rode my bike around, read books, went to movies, watched TV, shopped for groceries, cooked most of my meals, went on dates, and pretty much never left tow…

How did you get back into the job world? I'm in a similar situation and wondering how to spin my time off (which I've loved).

This was back in 2012 that I started working again. I just looked at Craigslist and got lucky when I saw an ad that was the intersection of my previous 2 positions. Applied there, got it, and stayed for a bit more than 3 years.

My background is writing/marketing though so it’s not like my skills were particularly out of date.

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#225

Post by Maro »

anotheryou wrote: post #167
Maro wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. The 1-2 months I usually take off between jobs is always super productive. I do a lot of reading, write blog posts, hack out stuff.

So you quit before you search for a new job? Most job offers I see are ASAP.

I just tell the next company that I will join on date X. I don't care about their ASAPs.

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#226

Post by bradneuberg »

automatoney wrote: post #156
bradneuberg wrote: post #83

I've been in the industry nearly 20 years and I always take breaks between jobs. I've worked for startups, Google, Dropbox, non-profits, etc. Between jobs I've pursued personal growth, traveled extensively, re-tooled my CS skill sets in new directions, gotten healthy, done extensive open source work, and more. I highly recommend it to others in the industry if you have the ability to do so; it's only helped my person…

I'm just starting out so I'm really curious how long the breaks you took between jobs were, and if you had the next job lined up before you took your break? Also off topic but what was it like working for non-profits, and what sort of work did you do?

The breaks were anywhere from one month to a year. I never had the next job lined up before hand.

All my work with non-profits involved doing open source in collaboration with them as a consultant. It was great :)

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#227

Post by sizzle »

BuckRogers wrote: post #130
bitexploder wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not 1%, but it tends to be some element of luck, risk taking, and a lot of hard work. Luck can be such a huge factor. Some times a lot of all three.

I agree but would like to add to that it's true, for the generation that built the principle. Another generation may build out that initial wealth or business. Usually by gen3 or 4 it's gone. At a point unless it's massive wealth (I'm thinking billionaires), there's a clueless generation raised that has no idea how lucky they're the descendants of that initial generation that worked hard and smart during good times ,…

Very interesting story, thanks for sharing your story, that's what makes HN so special.

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#228

Post by biscottigelato »

dorchadas wrote: post #203
biscottigelato wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tips for companies to take your open sourced work as experience? I've mostly just been thrown the book at doing algorithm puzzles and such... Got rejected for not 'technically competent' despite polished complex app on both the App Store and on Github. It's insulting to the point I want to start cancelling processes with all Unicorns...

Same. I had a website that I was fairly proud of that involved DjangoREST and Angular and such, and was basically told "Anyone can do that" when I applied for a junior job. It was horribly demotivating, and I don't know if I've seriously applied for a coding job since, which is sad as I'd love to shift into programming and still do it on my own.

I think a lot of employees feel that since their company have a great website, a great product, a great business, they conflate it as their own and that 'anybody can do it'. In fact they have only done a tiny portion of anything themselves. It's not until they get thrown out on a blank canvas they'd learn to appreciate how hard it is if all they have is their own pair of hands.

Unfortunately the people interviewing are often going to be life-long employees that are expert of climbing the corp ladder, not so much the entrepreneurs who found and own the business.

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#229

Post by yoz-y »

Latteland wrote: post #204
yoz-y wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An encompassing term for artists, designers, illustrators and other profession where your job is mainly to get original ideas and implement them.

So does that mean using engineering and math as the basis of building bespoke software is not creative in that sense? Just curious, not criticism - because I always thought of designing the architecture of a large software system, making it work within constraints, codes, making it easy to work on, fit withing design constraints, a beautiful UI, even a new programming language as creative.

As far as I know no. I do agree with you that programming (and many other professions) can be/are creative. Still having the term "creative" as profession does not mean that other professions are un-creative. People like to put people in bins and give them labels, and I suppose that creative is the main ability these professions require.

Maybe one thing that is specific (at least from when I spoke with people employing creatives) is that they have more leeway on what to do.

Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

#230

Post by elindbe2 »

bitexploder wrote: post #96
lovelearning wrote: post #72

A "gap" seems to be almost like a crime no tech worker should dare do. I have seen otherwise rational coworkers reject resumes only for having a "gap". Most want to relax, but the same people also punish those who do just that. I thought it was a quirk of the society I live in, but from comments here, it looks like it's the norm in all countries.

We give our employees time to take sabbaticals. One person took 6 weeks and hiked the El Camino trail in Spain. We actually have to encourage people to take time off :)

6 weeks is a long vacation, not a sabbatical. Those would be 6 months plus. I say this not to be pedantic but because I worry about the concept of a sabbatical being watered down before it becomes more commonplace.
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