I would definitely not want to have no income for half a year (or more). Especially considering the current economic downturn. It would probably stress me out even more.
Granted I was planning on doing this anyway (just a bit ahead of schedule for me), I needed to be ejected from the hamster wheel by force to acknowledge that it was the job and not me.
Then next year I will start looking again, but I will be way more picky. A job that you hate can wreck you.
A sabbatical is an investment in yourself, and by definition not a cheap one. Although depending on who you are and what you want to do with it, it doesn't have to come 100% out of one's own pocket.
A great sabbatical would be teaching children, or underrepresented adults. That will affray expenses, and gets you in on a group buy for health insurance, for those of us stuck with that problem.
Still, it's not available to everyone, I don't want to dismiss that. I'd like to see it possible for more of us. This is not an industry which is short of wealth, and a nonprofit which helps match mid-career software people with sabbatical opportunities, scholarships, and so on, would be a welcome addition to the landscape.
this is also a terrifying concept: what if I don't?
If you look for a job a bit later, it's actually easier than looking for it right after when you find yourself unemployed ;)
Also, even within software, I can't imagine trying to find a job with a 6-month gap on my resume. I'm not in the bay area, and even working remotely, competition is brutal. A gap on your resume is a great reason to get immediately rejected by wherever you're applying to.
Not all of us are in the niches of software where jobs are easy to come by. Not everything is web dev.
I understand where this is coming from, but it can be a trap. Maximizing your retirement savings for the distant future at the cost of your current health is not a good tradeoff.
All things in balance. One's current needs are just as important as their future needs. "Future you" can figure it out when the time comes. They're pretty smart :p. "Future you" would want you to properly take care of "current you".
I say this as someone who has spent most of my net worth -- over $100k -- over the past 2 years of not working as I've taken time to heal and grow and learn how to live life better.
It's been a difficult journey for me but it is something I needed to do. I have more hope for the future than I have had in many, many years.
> Also, even within software, I can't imagine trying to find a job with a 6-month gap on my resume. I'm not in the bay area, and even working remotely, competition is brutal. A gap on your resume is a great reason to get immediately rejected by wherever you're applying to.
This may be a hurdle, but it's probably not as big as you think. You were taking care of your health -- no details required. The matter has since been resolved and you are excited and ready to make use of your skills again. Do they need someone with your skillset or not? Don't project your worry onto them :) They will sense that and that will be the actual issue.
Being responsible about the future is important, but let's phrase the goal as "savings upon retirement", rather than "retirement savings".
A sabbatical can help with that in a few ways, but first let's talk about the gap.
A sabbatical is not a gap in one's resume, it's a sabbatical. What's done with that time is open-ended, but one of the things it does is provide a useful line item.
This is in fact a class thing. People of independent means will take time off to improve their careers. Real talk, I can't stress this enough: don't buy a sabbatical, or a Porche, if you can't afford it.
They don't put this on their resume, but rather, on their C.V.
I'm not from those people, but growing up in a university town, one gets to know them.
A sabbatical is good if: you can write an open-source library in your niches which solves a problem, if you expand the breadth of your expertise, if what you're doing has a significant philanthropic angle. All of these can set someone up for a higher tier of job, something with better prospects.
It's good to have a comfortable nest egg, and it's even better if when you do, you have the kind of respect and stake in your field where you don't actually retire. Emeritus is a wonderful Latin loanword. May we all merit emeritus.
What you contributed in years 1-3 are going to be worth far more than what you are contributing after year 7, see exponential returns.
>Also, even within software, I can't imagine trying to find a job with a 6-month gap on my resume.
Idk what field you are in but I get recruiter calls and emails daily, there is massive demand so I don't see this making much sense.
>A gap on your resume is a great reason to get immediately rejected by wherever you're applying to.
I don't think this actually bears out for people with in-demand skills that can interview well. Maybe you are overthinking how long people even look at a resume before interviews, hint: it's not long.
One could easily move past the gap by saying you took an extended break, were traveling, were working on a passion project, etc.
You shouldn't have gap in your resume. I took more than one year off to travel around New Zealand. I put this in my resume and I think it made it more interesting. After that I migrated from Hungary to the UK during COVID and didn't had any problem finding a job.
I also set up my next gig in the weeks immediately following layoffs, which I’ll be starting in November, so I’m excited to know that there’s financial security at the end of this experience.
It’s been a much needed break.
So with a sabbatical now, just think that you're making time now so that you can have a better retirement later because you'll be ready for an enjoyable retirement as opposed to needing to take two or three or five years of your retirement, just calming down from your crazy career.
It's definitely not an easy thing to consider. Do evaluate with an extended pros and cons list and weight each item in the list.
Burnout for me weighed extraordinarily heavily.
You also have the concept of compounding interest. A year of savings at age 30 is much more valuable than a year of savings when I'm 60.
Some context for the fun of it. Sabbath is the 7th day of rest that the God of Genesis took -- yes even God found rest to at least be good (if not needed). He also prescribed for the jewish people of the Old testament seven sacred feasts, which could be multiday if not weeklong festivities and breaks from work. Then there was the Sabbatical you mentioned -- One year off in 7 to rest the land and labor. Furthermore there was Jubilee -- a sabbatical year that went even further :)
Seems like ancient people (if not God) deeply understood the need for rest!
I simply fucked off and traveled the world. Half the time I didn't even know what day of the week it was.
It was glorious and it cured my burn out.
I feel like I forget so much about programming on a daily basis that I would probably have to re-earn a CS degree if I took 3 months off lol.
Skipping 3 years you wouldn’t miss anything, just read up on the latest and you are good to go.
If you are lucky, the PR you submitted to some sleeping library, months ago, might have finally been accepted when you get back.
And importantly, I have space to think about work--what I like and don't--so that when I go back, I can be intentional about my next move. Rather than just climbing the ladder that's in front of me.
The term has roots in "seven", just like Sabbath, so with 14 years in the industry, you've skipped one.
I think a solid half-year off every seven to ten years is an excellent practice for intellectually demanding labor.
What makes it a sabbatical is that it's a change of pace which furthers your career. I'd love to take a sabbatical and just work on building stuff, personally: from soldering, to designing boards, probing them, writing firmware, I'm a rank amateur, and I'd love to level up for awhile, while free of the burden of justifying my salary in the process.
It could be painting, there's a popular author who wrote a book about the connection between painting and hacking, can't remember his name but his stuff gets posted here all the time.
What it isn't, is a vacation, or a convalescence. It sounds like you haven't hit "can't work", just "sucks to work", which is a blessing.
If you can't afford it, that's understandable, there are ways to get some of the benefit from a new job, but "relieved of the burden of delivering value" is an important factor.
I've known people who pushed "sucks to work" until it became "can't work", and they don't all make it back to the profession, a bit less than half in fact. Whatever you do, I urge you to take burnout seriously, because at the limit it's a serious medical condition which can cripple or kill you.