Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
1–10 of 233 posts
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#2I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population.
More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for your career? It sounds like you've had a great time but we don't know how this materially affected your career.
What about your sabbatical has made your career better now that you've done it? All I've seen is that you've open sourced a Hugo theme, read a few books, and you worked on a side project. Sounds like something plenty of people do with 40 hour workweeks.
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#3I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for yo…
I think a more accurate title could simply be "not working for a year is fun"... and then the immediate reaction is "no kidding".
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#4I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for yo…
> I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population.
To be fair, he says the exact same thing in his opening paragraphs. I think there's value in people sharing their experiences, even if it isn't directly applicable to 99% of the population.
I agree with your other points though. It sounds like he's happy with his decisions for personal-fulfillment reasons. He didn't do a good job of explaining how it advanced his career.
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#5I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for yo…
Appreciate the feedback @acconrad. I understand that I'm extremely fortunate, and I try to point that out in the introduction of my article. Like @whack commented, I'm sharing my personal experience---both the good and the bad---and all the better if there's an element to it that a reader can relate to.
As for your other point, does the best thing for a career have to make it _materially_ better? For me personally, the time off and self-reflection has been a better learning experience than if I hadn't quit, especially the ideas regarding agency and productivity, and these are things that will stay with me into whatever I do next.
I don't doubt that people with 40 hour workweeks can do the little that I've done, but if you see the goals that I set out for myself these were just a minor aspect of what I wanted to accomplish.
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#6I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for yo…
> I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. To be fair, he says the exact same thing in his opening paragraphs.…
Thanks for the feedback, @whack.
Saying that it's the "best thing I've done in my life" is way too dramatic, but at this point in my career it has been the best thing I've done because of how much I've grown personally.
I don't consider myself a good writer so your point is very helpful.
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#7I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for yo…
I think a more accurate title could simply be "not working for a year is fun"... and then the immediate reaction is "no kidding".
Ha, that would've been better!
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#8I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for yo…
@acconrad This response feels unjustifiably bitter and negative. Joshua acknowledges his privilege in the second paragraph. His privilege neither invalidates his experience or makes it useless to share. While I too would be interested to know how the time off materially affected his career, I suspect that this hasn't fully revealed itself to Joshua yet.
Despite the misleading title, I still enjoyed the read.
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#9I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for yo…
> I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. To be fair, he says the exact same thing in his opening paragraphs.…
Agree re not explaining how it advanced his career. I did something similar about 10y ago. Was burned out so skied all spring, hiked and went abroad during summer, did a small amount of contract dev then gradually decided it was time to get back to real work. Don't necessarily think it helped my career nor was I expecting it to. Had to explain to recruiters and companies the gap in my resume which not everyone could relate to ... but ... so what. I had a lot of fun.
Re: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
#10I'm happy for you but this is a super privileged viewpoint that most people can't really learn from. I'd be happy too if I could just take a year off and do whatever I want. Most people can't do things like traveling to different cities and trying out a new place for 3 months. It's just unrealistic and only reflects and incredibly tiny population. More importantly: has it really been the best thing you've done for yo…
Appreciate the feedback @acconrad. I understand that I'm extremely fortunate, and I try to point that out in the introduction of my article. Like @whack commented, I'm sharing my personal experience---both the good and the bad---and all the better if there's an element to it that a reader can relate to. As for your other point, does the best thing for a career have to make it _materially_ better? For me personally, t…
The jury's still out on if this was good for your career. The title is borderline clickbait due to this word choice.
I don't doubt taking a sabbatical was good for you in various ways, but your career is probably not one of them as of now.
I've taken numerous lengthy sabbaticals, and find them the only way to maintain anything resembling a fair work:life balance. But I am under no delusions of them being good for my career, they're practically explicitly anti-career - I deliberately walk away from the competition for extended periods of time. I've just chosen to not care, because I prioritize other aspects of my life differently than one who lives to work.