[aphextron]

>Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too?

Unless you have some serious FU money saved up, I'd strongly reconsider. A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive to potential employers. And that cash goes quick when there's none coming in. Trust me I know. It's alluring to just walk away. But trying to get a job when you're unemployed is literally 10x harder than while employed, regardless of the actual circumstances of your departure.

Just try taking a few weeks off first. And if that's not enough, ask for a sabbatical. At the very least have something lined up for a few months after you leave. Don't fall for the "I can have another job in two weeks" meme. It's rarely true in reality for all but the very top of the market.

[ahelwer]

Beyond the distasteful idea that we should always act in a way demonstrating obedience to potential employers, the solution to this is extremely easy. Gap year? No! I am merely doing independent consulting. Do I actually have any contracts? So many questions!

Plus if you actually use the time to work on OSS instead of traveling or whatever I have no idea how an employer (that you'd want to work at) could fault you for that. Seems like a huge asset.

You may enjoy this article by our friend NNT: https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person...

[JKCalhoun]

> Beyond the distasteful idea that we should always act in a way demonstrating obedience to potential employers

Maybe even more than distasteful, perhaps soul nullifying? (Pardon the awkward phrase, it's what I get when looking for an antonym for affirming.)

For myself, when I leave the engineering field it will not be to return to engineering again unless it's strictly on my own terms. More than likely teaching or similar would follow a "gap year".

[ghaff]

Yeah. There's no doubt age discrimination and people in PR who filter on meaningless stuff. But the idea that you can never do anything non-standard seems pretty ridiculous to me. And I'm pretty sure that no one who has hired me would think twice about it. I never have taken a real sabbatical--never seemed like a great time--but I have taken a number of month-long vacations and it's never been an issue.

[aphextron]

>Gap year? No! I am merely doing independent consulting. Do I actually have any contracts? So many questions!

People aren't stupid. They'll have questions. And lies are extremely hard to keep straight in the long term. The sad fact of the matter is that you are not a person to them in the initial hiring process. You are a piece of paper. And unless you are some rock star 10x top level candidate with impressive credentials, they'll have a dozen other pieces of paper that look just as appealing and don't have those questions attached.

[baron_harkonnen]

> A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive to potential employers.

I'm not sure where you got this idea in your head but it is demonstrably false in tech right now.

I took a gap year after getting fired from an extremely toxic company. I didn't want to rush into a new role right away after such an awful experience.

Once I was ready to go back it took ~1 month to go from starting my search to signing an offer letter. I interviewed at a large range of companies and was pretty picky after my previous experience.

My apply -> interview rate was consistent with what it had been in the past, and nobody cared about either my being fired or taking time off.

> trying to get a job when you're unemployed is literally 10x harder than while employed

The only thing that changed for me interview wise was that I was much pickier after not having to work for an organization for such a long time.

The rest of the interview is much easier since you have much more time to do things like practice for coding interviews, doing take home work etc.

On top of all that, because I was so grossed out from looking at linkedin during that time, I've never bothered update my profile, and I still get the same constant stream of recruiters reaching out even though it looks like I'm still unemployed.

In retrospect I wish I had had the sense to just quit earlier. Very often interviewing when you're employed at a place you are not happy with makes you too eager to find someplace else, making you more likely to ignore warning signs during the interview.

[Goronmon]

I interviewed at a large range of companies and was pretty picky after my previous experience.

I wonder, realistically, how many people out there actually get to be "pretty picky after my previous experience"?

[sfeng]

I think this is horrible advice. I’ve hired all sorts of people with voluntary time off on their resume. Your experience doesn’t ‘expire’ in a single year. Life is about more than just working, if you have the money to take time off to enjoy your life you shouldn’t not do it out of fear.

[0xbadcafebee]

He's right about it being harder to get a job while unemployed. You finish your gap year and then spend another 6 months trying to get hired. Maybe if you lived in SF it'd be easier.

[aphextron]

>Your experience doesn’t ‘expire’ in a single year

You're right, it doesn't. But it brings up all sorts of questions in the mind of your interviewer as to the true nature of your departure, and it immediately puts you at a huge disadvantage.

[NikolaNovak]

I think the advice is a reasonable thing to consider; a lot of responses (and presumably downvotes) are either "It doesn't matter to potential employers", which is categorically untrue - it'll matter to some, raise a question to others, and be irrelevant to others yet. How you answer that question is important, and it's fascinating that other half of comments is, basically, "Lie!".

When I'm interviewing candidates, a gap year is a data point - no more, no less. It may lead to more substantial data points, or it may be a non-issue. If you do as many here suggest and lie through your teeth about it ("I was a CTO! I was working on startup! Independent consulting"), you may get away with it, but likely not (even if you think you did); and if caught in prevaricating or lying about your experience and work activities, that is a far far bigger and more immediate red flag than the gap year itself.

Also - sure, knowledge doesn't expire, but oh boy skills do get rusty! A year into my new management-y role, I felt how rusty my sysadmin skills were getting. Two years in and you shouldn't give me root access again without some catchup :-).

[ahelwer]

You mind seems to be trapped in the employment binary where you're either a full-time W-2 employee or you're unemployed. With contracting and startups it isn't so simple. Contractors (especially ones working in boutique niches on scoped projects) might work for a month with much time between contracts. During that down time maybe they write blog posts or contribute to OSS or hang out with someone else prototyping some neat ideas that don't pan out (which might reasonably be called a startup after the fact) or just do literally nothing so as to recover from burnout, which is lethal to the contractor in a way it isn't to an employee. All of which feed into more people dropping into their inbox inquiring about their contracting availability. It isn't "lying" to say time spent not working on a paid contract is time spent in service of contracting.

[ghaff]

Someone who has been doing "independent consulting" for six months or a year is pretty transparently obfuscating that they were unemployed. I'd probably view it in a better light--not that there's anything wrong with doing or trying to do some consulting on the side--if they were just open about taking some time off.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Unless you have some serious FU money saved up, I'd strongly reconsider.

You're talking to the HN crowd. I get the impression that a lot of the people here think of $200k/yr as poverty level. "FU money" to them is probably on the order of $100M.

[malozite]

The only places I have known who would care much about 'CV gaps' have been toxic workplaces who also discriminated against other groups for spurious reasons unrelated to their competence or likelihood of succeeding in the job.

Your attitude reinforces the corresponding attitude by many employers. If 50% of us signed a pledge not to have children, never to take any health risks, never to join a union, not sue our employers, etc, many employers would be delighted and would hire them preferentially, making things harder for the other 50%.

[Blackstone4]

I disagree. Whilst some employers would be dead against it, others may look positively on people taking sabbaticals/gap years. As long as you have a good CV/resume and if you are older, consistent work history and are taking the time off in a manner which is within your means, I would say go for it.

[dominotw]

> A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive to potential employers.

Nope. Not true in tech at all.

[KaiserPro]

Its far more nuanced than that.

you won't be marked as radioactive, but you will have to reassure people that you're not planning to do it again with little to no notice. apart from that, I would plan to get back a month earlier than planned so you have a money buffer to get a job you want, rather than _need_

[ebiester]

Always assume that you will have bad luck and will need a few months to get a job. More importantly, you will have higher standards for your next job if you have the financial security to do so.

That said, I forsee a lot of gap years in 2021-2023. The key is to have something to show for it. Did you spend a year in another country and learn the language? Do you have a series of open source pull requests? Do you have a game? A novel, even if unpublished? We live in a capitalist society and people expect that you are always working on something.

[dccoolgai]

Learn to prevaricate better... And meet a friend who will do it for you.

"Yeah, I was the CTO of a startup. I learned a lot. Call this guy who was the CEO, he'll tell you about it."

[aphextron]

>"Yeah, I was the CTO of a startup. I learned a lot. Call this guy who was the CEO, he'll tell you about it."

Ah yes, an intricate lie. The very foundation of a solid working relationship.

[tasuki]

If my prospective employer has an issue with me having taken a sabbatical, I'd rather not work with them.