Getting hired is a competition. If you're up against another person who is laser focused on their career to the exclusions of all other hobbies or priorities in their life, then that person is more likely to get a call then you are if you just took a year off to do whatever. Companies get many resumes for each opening and they just can't call everyone. At some point you will start getting filtered out vs people who are a better fit "on paper."

However, hiring decisions are not just made on the skill suitability of candidates. If you are an interesting person with enough passion for life to go live it for awhile up against a person who has done nothing with their life for the last 10 years but code for 14 hours a day, you are going to have an advantage. People hire people they like and want to spend time with. That's the reason why technical interviews are mandated by many companies, because companies know without them it's a popularity contest.

Go live your life and chase your passions. It's much better than the alternative.

I agree with some part of your second paragraph. If I met some guy who did nothing but code 14 hours daily for 10 years, my first guess would be that he may be mentally deranged and impossible to work with on a team. Maybe 10-12 hours 5 days a week for many years I’d just think he’s very serious about his career. Beyond that he may be a crazy person.

> I mean why do they care. If I save up money and take a year off every few years? That just means if I get bored of them I'll walk out.

Your last sentence is exactly why they care. They don't want people who will quit when they get bored; they want people who need the job.

I know people who have used words like "flaky" and "transient" and "unreliable" to describe people with gaps. To the people making such judgements, an involuntary gap indicates incompetence, and a voluntary gap indicates someone who is confident, independent, and unlikely to put up with bullshit (and thus more likely to quit).

Have you been part of the hiring process before? It's very time-consuming, stressful, and hard to make a choice.

From the interviewers perspective, there's a higher chance that the person who hasn't worked for 12+ months simply isn't good enough to find a job, and it could be a waste of their time/resources to interview them instead of the person who has been consistently working.

> Have you been part of the hiring process before?

Yes for decades.

> It's very time-consuming, stressful, and hard to make a choice.

Yes

> From the interviewers perspective, there's a higher chance that the person who hasn't worked for 12+ months simply isn't good enough to find a job

This is called sexism.

Women are most likely to be the person who raises kids takes times off to help parents.

You have just justified sex discrimination. In you are interviewing, step up and do the job properly. Interview the candidate not your stereotype.

> there's a higher chance that the person who hasn't worked for 12+ months simply isn't good enough to find a job

surely that can't really apply if the same person held good jobs for a reasonable length of time either side of the gap though?

> but they don't actually have a reason why. I once heard an interview with a recruiter (don't recall what industry) who said something along the lines of companies don't want to hire currently-unemployed people "because of the risk." My reaction (having been laid-off over 6 months earlier) was "Risk? What risk? The risk that they'll take a lowball offer because they need a job?"