[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.

[ahelwer]

See my other comment on why this isn't lying. And stop being scared of your own shadow around interviewers.

[Mauricebranagh]

Seconded one of my regrets was not really going for a place on a round the world boat race a few years ago and taking a sabbatical to do the whole thing.

Id just been diagnosed which a chronic illness and though it would have been fair on the rest of the crew.

[mikeodds]

fwiw, I hire people and a 6 month gap on a CV doesn’t weigh negatively at all for me vs the relevant experience they have.

Ultimately I’m looking to hire the most effective person for that job.

I’ve got my own views on how terrible some HR depts. can be for an initial CV elimination round, esp. when hiring for technical positions.

[sigstoat]

> People aren't stupid. They'll have questions

i interview and i've never looked at the dates of employment on someone's resume. i don't care one whit when you did what in the past, just what you're capable of right now.

[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"?

[baron_harkonnen]

In the world? Very, very few. I know it's it a tremendous fortune and privileged to be able to search for a job you think is a good match. Most people work in near slavery conditions with little choice.

At the same time, squandering that privilege out of some misplaced guilt only helps employers exert control of employees.

In tech? Virtually everyone has that level of privilege so long as they have some experience. I'm fairly certain I couldn't get hired by a FAANG company (I don't have too much interest in it, but I won't deny the possibility of sour grapes), so I'm not in some super-elite category of tech worker.

In addition, not everything lasts forever. I used to work for minimum wage in customer support jobs and I wouldn't be surprised if in 10-20 years (or sooner) I'm back in a much less desirable role.

It took me a long time to recognize that my market value had increase over time, and one of my biggest career mistakes was underestimating that and not acting on it sooner. As the saying goes, from a time when most people had to work on farms, "make hay while the sun shines".

[Mauricebranagh]

I did when my previous place made me redundant, I didn't need to jump into the first job and I could claim unemployment whist waiting to.

It well be more experienced people though and you will need enough $ to do this.

[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.

[sthu11182]

Key thing, when you quit, don't burn bridges. I took a year off, did some traveling after working at my job for 8 years. At the end of the year, I applied to a few jobs, but my old boss contacted me to rehire me. I went back as if I never left. I am in a different field, so you experience may vary, but if you are in a good team, your old boss is likely to rehire you instead of investing in someone they don't know and have to train.

[coryrc]

It was easier for me to get into Google when I had lots of free time for leetcode.

[sumtechguy]

There are 200 resumes in this pile. 199 of them need to go for one reason or another. 'no recent experience' is one of those reasons.

[PeterisP]

My experience with tech hiring is getting three decent resumes for 5 open positions, everyone qualified gets an interview and serious consideration. It's not that way for junior people in entry level positions and non-IT staff (there the "200 resumes, no reason to interview most of them" scenario often applies), but if we're talking about e.g. mid-level developers, then every decent manager I know is in a "always be hiring" mode.

[xtqctz]

Old economy jobs in the midwest, sure. I applied to FAANG jobs after a year off and no one even brought it up.

[astrange]

I don't care about this at all, I'd assume you still remember how to do things after a year (or even two.) Of course before it gets to the team it might be filtered elsewhere.

[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.

[ghaff]

Assuming I would even notice a six month gap, if someone told me they had taken a year off to work on an open source project, hike the Appalachian Trail, or whatever, I'd find it far more of a conversation starter than a negative. Maybe you're either imagining things or talking to the wrong employers.

[loloquwowndueo]

As an interviewer I recognize people might take time off work for a variety of reasons and never give a lot of thought to unemployment gaps. I’ve found very short stays at previous positions (say less than a year) to be more of a warning; I want people who are likely to stick around.

[jen20]

> and it immediately puts you at a huge disadvantage.

Great - it can add to the list of disadvantages I have with companies I would never want to work for.

[thom]

I can’t imagine wanting to work for someone who thinks this way, and it’s certainly not a common mindset in my experience.

[cryptonym]

Depends how you present it.

Being open-minded, seeing something different, meeting other people, working hard to be able to follow your objectives and take calculated risks. That can be a valuable experience and an advantage over ten similar candidates.

[mden]

I've done about a 10 mo break after my first job and after my second and it has never been an issue with employment. You're overestimating how much hr and hiring managers care.

[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.

[NikolaNovak]

1. All of it is true in general and explicitly not the case for the OP/GP I was responding to, which indicated a traveling/no-work year, so it feels you're fighting a straw man.

As well, all of it is easily discussable during interview, and my team and myself will not see any of these in a negative light.

2. >> "It isn't "lying" to say time spent not working on a paid contract is time spent in service of contracting."

Of course not. At the time of my post however, a lot of advice in comments was explicitly to lie and "Say you were in a startup / independent consulting / working on OSS / CTO even if you weren't, rather than admitting to gap / traveling year", and my reaction to them is: That lie will harm you much more than any honest discussion of the gap year.

So again, I feel we are talking past each other here a bit. I've been a contractor, I've been a consultant, and I'm a full-time employee now; I've taken a time to write a book/techmanual, I've run a photography business for a bit,and I've taken extended paternity leave; so I don't think my mind is trapped into thinking of employment as binary. But I do think honesty during interview is paramount - on my team, I don't care how good your technical or functional skillset is, if we cannot trust your integrity. I understand that this is a tricky position for the candidate as market at times rewards dishonesty; but I try to be convincingly upfront in what we're looking for.

[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.

[jen20]

> Someone who has been doing "independent consulting" for six months or a year is pretty transparently obfuscating that they were unemployed.

Lol, what? I did exactly that after getting pissed off with $LARGE_CRAPPY_EMPLOYER. Worked for 3-4 companies for 6-8 week periods over that time on a short term basis, and made more than $LARGE_CRAPPY_EMPLOYER by a factor n > 2, and did some work on a startup. But then $LARGE_EMPLOYER came along with an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Don’t project what “independent consulting” might mean for you onto everyone. It would be interview-ending if I caught a hiring manager suggested this was a euphemism, and I’d subsequently recommend every person that asked me about said company steered clear.

[jlokier]

Heh, I did "independent consulting" for over a decade.

It's also the most densely packed section of my resume because it was by far the most interesting and diverse range of work in that time.

[ghaff]

I didn't express things very well, Sure, I know lots of independent consultants who are legitimately work full-time or at least on a regular basis. I was more referring to someone who just sticks "consulting" on their resume so they don't have a gap but didn't actually do anything.

[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.

[ghaff]

I feel like I'm seeing a larger than normal wave of retirements. Which isn't surprising. People who were thinking that way anyway probably figured they might as well keep collecting a salary during the pandemic given everything was closed anyway. But now that travel is creaking back to life, etc. people are ready to pull the trigger.

[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.

[dccoolgai]

No one you work for has a "relationship" with you unless there is nepotism involved. They will lie to you. They will throw you out when you don't make them money. The only "lie" is that there is a "relationship" and if you believe it, it will end up making you very unhappy. Live for yourself and your family.

[sangnoir]

I've never had reason to embellish my resume, but let's not pretend employers don't exaggerate, are "aspirational" or outright lie what the job is about "You'll be working on cutting-edge technology" vs. "Actually, we plan on migrating to that cutting-edge platform soon, in the meantime, add features to our 'legacy' PHP5 and Java 1.7 platforms" and "We offer unlimited vacation" vs. "Everyone usually only takes the week between Christmas and new years as our clients shut down then. Currently, the team really needs your contribution to make the release deadline, so now is not a good time"

Both interviewer and interviewee have to be diligent during interview process to dig out the truth about important aspects of what they expect, and not just take it at face-value (asking pointed questions usually reveals the truth, for either party)

[kesselvon]

Companies lie to employees all the time; it's literally not illegal.

[astrange]

If you get stock compensation maybe you could sue them for securities fraud.

[Frondo]

> Ah yes, an intricate lie.

Not a joke -- what do you think resumes are?

[polytely]

Wait, is putting fake jobs on your resume a common occurrence? I must say that that never even occurred to me.

[dccoolgai]

There's a thick line between _putting an out-and-out fake job on your resume_ and _embellishing_ a little bit to optimize your profile.

[tasuki]

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