[mitko]

Kudos to Michael for keeping busy with projects.

I quit my job 6 months ago. Gave myself 6 months to see if I would descend into complacent procrastination, and if so - I'd find another job. Having no job, but enough saving to rely on, has been a blessing. I've learned so many things from creative writing to deep learning, wrote a lot of personal essays, biked for 500miles, and did some side projects. Having one unsuccessful attempt at a startup convinced me that this is a much preferable route to getting back to salaried employment. The learning is a lot more, and there is a higher potential for payoff.

[mtlynch]

Thanks for reading!

It sounds like we had similar experiences. I agree that the biggest benefit has been the freedom to explore my interests. At Google, I always wanted to get deeper into machine learning, but I felt pressure to lean into my strengths so that I could deliver something and get promoted rather than slow down and learn something new.

Now that I'm on my own, I do still feel pressure to release something, but it's also a lot easier for me to control the pace and devote more time to learning because I'm on my own roadmap.

[dwoot]

Hey Michael - if you don't mind sharing, which team did you work on and why did you feel the pressure to lean into strengths instead of learning something new? Could it be that this was just your perspective on it at the moment? The alternate perspective that I see is that learning something new pays off into the future even though it may not feel like you're moving somewhere at the moment. Did existing responsibilities require too much bandwidth that it made attempts at fitting in any learning a daunting endeavor?

Additionally, did you feel that you had the freedom to learn and apply ML?

[mtlynch]

Most of my time was on Google Maps.

The reason it was hard to slow down and learn was that promotions were so difficult to get. You can only apply every six months, and so many stars have to align in your favor to get promoted and so many things can derail it. Your project can get cancelled. Your project can flop even if you personally did everything right. One of your senior teammates (whose word carries a lot of weight with the promotion committee) can leave the company.

It was so hard to get promoted when I was trying to get promoted that I felt like if I wasn't focused on promotion, I'd just never get a promotion.

I wrote a longer post about this a few months ago:

https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/

>Additionally, did you feel that you had the freedom to learn and apply ML?

I theoretically had freedom to learn and apply ML, but it would have been at the expense of my career. For example, my last major project was to launch a new ML pipeline in six months (it sounds like a long time, but it's really hard to do this with all of Google's bleeding edge infrastructure and bureaucracy). I was leading a team with two other developers, both of whom had graduate degrees in ML-focused subjects. I could theoretically have assigned myself more of the ML work, but the most likely way for us to meet our deadline was to let my teammates handle the deep ML work while I did more infrastructure work.

[Buttons840]

I'm seriously thinking of doing this myself. I have a date set, I have concrete plans. I want to create some side products and get some passive income and learn new things.

My biggest fear though, is that when I do look for work again, people will say: "That's great that you took that time to learn, I can see that you learned a lot of valuable skills, we want you to be part of our team! -- here's some poorly thought out features we want you to hack into our shitty CRUD app".

[djrogers]

That's kinda like talking yourself out of going on vacation because when you come back you won't be on vacation anymore. Do it for the experience, for the learning, for the growth - don't do it for what happens after.

[Buttons840]

Thanks for that advice. I think you're right, I'm thinking to far ahead about something that might or might not happen.

[bitL]

Try another start up before you go back ;-)

[mitko]

Thanks, bitL - I am in fact doing so- it's a pivot on the initial idea

[mjhoy]

Where did you bike?

[mitko]

From Medford, OR to San Francisco along the coast, but skipped a section before Crescent City due to advice of it being dangerous to cycle through. I put some photos at #or2ca17

[syndacks]

cool - I've done that route as well. care to expand on the 'advice of it being dangerous'?

[mitko]

Cave Junction to Crescent city is a narrow two lane road with high cliffs/drops on each side, and a tunnel, with semi-trucks taking that route (I was told). I opted for a shuttle for that section after looking it up on Google StreetView - http://oregon-point.com/southwest-point/