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I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

leblancfg.com

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Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#41

Post by mikepurvis »

MisterTea wrote: post #18
wdrw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in North America (and the author seems to be from Canada), having a company give you any sabbatical at all is pretty rare, and 6+ months is pure fantasy:) And not everyone likes travel, the post actually explains his reasoning pretty well.

> and 6+ months is pure fantasy:) I've seen this before. Had a vendor become helpless after their only engineer took a 6 month sabbatical. Had to cancel orders and switch vendors because they stated "Until the engineer returns, we can not quote a delivery time." Imagine being that company...

"Just so you know, our bus number is 1. Now, about your order..."

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#42

Post by RyanOD »

lagniappe wrote: post #22

>After five years at Shopify, employees get a paid month off to do whatever the hell they want. I took mine in April 2026. Bleak.. Only a month after five years.

Not bleak for most people. I've never worked anywhere that offers an earned chunk of time off like that (besides standard PTO days).

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#44

Post by hdndjsbbs »

bee_rider wrote: post #30
foltik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes All the superficial filler leaves a linkedin flavored taste in my mouth. I’d prefer to hear the author’s own voice and thoughts without noise injected to give the illusion of polish.

I thought it was actually quite funny, but I read it as a sarcastic parody of that writing style. I mean there’s no way: > This is the founder story: what I built, why I chose it, and what a month of hardware taught me. The engineering writeup will come later, once I've talked to someone who actually understands IP strategy. is for real, right?

Oh this is very real. As someone who lives in Ottawa, Shopify employees are a unique brand of people who think they are tuned into the SV trends but are just huffing their own farts. They're all acting out a small-scale replica of taking peptides and trying to found Uber for Polycules but in a sleepy capital city full of government employees.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#45

Post by leblancfg »

Aye, author here. Pleased it's getting visibility ofc, but ABSOLUTELY not expecting to get traction this early.

Please pardon the AI-generated placeholder images and some of the text at https://intensity.systems, I'm still very actively working on that.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#46

Post by LanceH »

MattRix wrote: post #32
lagniappe wrote: post #22

>After five years at Shopify, employees get a paid month off to do whatever the hell they want. I took mine in April 2026. Bleak.. Only a month after five years.

Not sure why that’s bleak? It’s on top of the regular vacation days you get every year. I don’t know of any other company (at least not here in Canada!) that would give you an entire paid month off.

It's "bleak" because some people enjoy making others feel worse about things they have no control over.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#47

Post by darkwater »

engineer_22 wrote: post #5

I'm 13 years into my career and I haven't taken more than 5 days off in a row. That's usually a family reunion. I think 4-8 weeks to recharge and reset would be helpful. What's the research say?

Wow. Are you in the US? If so, is this the norm in the US? Pretty depressing... why do you want a SV wage then?

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#48

Post by qwerpy »

AntiUSAbah wrote: post #27
ilikecakeandpie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost 17 years in and there's been a few times where I had more than 10 days off in a row, and I recently had a four week sabbatical. Anecdotally, it was great and reminded me that retirement has always been the goal.

A sabbatical is half a year or a year in germany. NO one would ever say this nonsense of 'four week sabbatical'.

To me, “work 40+ years and retire when you’re already physically and mentally slow” is the real nonsense. A sabbatical thrown in here and there doesn’t make up for it. I’m grateful that I live somewhere with high enough paying jobs that I can simply quit after just 20 years.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#49

Post by gary_b »

RyanOD wrote: post #42
lagniappe wrote: post #22

>After five years at Shopify, employees get a paid month off to do whatever the hell they want. I took mine in April 2026. Bleak.. Only a month after five years.

Not bleak for most people. I've never worked anywhere that offers an earned chunk of time off like that (besides standard PTO days).

If by "most people" you mean "most Americans." That is pretty standard in Europe
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