| Congrats on unplugging and recovering your health which I think is severely overlooked until it is too late. Heres to it only getting better now. Now I may not have the most palatable news. Il preface this by saying it is not even fair and you don't deserve this roll of the dice that is shortsightedness by employers and the current market conditions. Firstly what is your financial situation (eg buffer, health insurance, expenses etc). Il assume (and pray) that you are financially unencumbered if you were able to take time off to take care of yourself. Now to the 4 points- 1. Leetcode and side projects. Good news is these are actually opposite. Companies that value one generally don't care about the other. So depending on your preference of companies and areas of passion you can see which to focus on. If time is not of the essence I'd suggest focussing on networking (say 10-20% or your time) to see what areas are hot, intersect with your passion and build something to get your brand and visibility on. 2. Short stints are hard to manage but assume you are managing to get calls to talk to a real person (recruiter, manager etc) be upfront and show how you grew in the 4 year break. Imo a resume can only tell so much. You can show a much better picture. Show what you learnt and what enlightenment you attained so that your next stint will be a huge killer! Doing (1) above well can come really handy. 3. So the kind of roles you used to do (some backend, some net admin) may not be much of the thing these days (at least in tech and startups?). So a bit of learning will be needed. Here is where #1 and investment is needed (depending on your urgency). Without this upskilling or learning or showing what you are passionate about (with artifacts) your ability to #2 is going to be weak. 4. Yes market timing sucks and is largely out of your control. So it comes down to what is your urgency and in the best case scenario if you had say 6 months what are you willing to commit to? |