> Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs.
This number is meaningless without previous year trends. In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'. Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things. (edit: to clarify, I mean changing jobs specifically in the context of making inroads toward the retire early portion of their goal. Changing jobs to increase compensation is as strong as ever)
Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs. The only way people can keep going is idle fantasies about a nondescript future date where this suffering ends.
> Workers have had more than a year to reconsider work-life balance or career paths
IMO, over the last year, people have only dived deeper into their delusions and relative sense of privilege. Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.
> "Hopefully we’ll see a lot more people in 2022 employed and stable because they're in jobs they actually like," she says.
> Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs.
Small quibble: Covid has shown people how miserable their jobs have always been.
All it's taken is a slight shift, a small perk, here and there, and people see it clear as day, and they want out. White collar workers got work from home: actually, it turns out I can give legal advice while planting basil in my backyard and no one on the conference call either notices or gives a shit. Blue collar workers got unemployment benefits that pay a living wage without needing to work 3 jobs and die of an early heart attack worrying about how they'll feed their kids.
I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up in the last year, and it's cause for celebration.
>I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up in the last year.
Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset. People hadn't noticed, and now they have.
It'll probably happen all over again, but at least there's hope for now.
You mean the Fed printed a ton of money and sent it to everyone making less than a certain amount, and the government guaranteed wages for those who no longer wish to work, and caused a labor shortage and inflation.
Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society by working are eroded and redistributed to those who don't wish to work.
If it keeps up, soon we'll all be poor, nobody will earn a living wage, but at least it will be equitable!
Don't forget that printing money for stimulus checks is borrowing at greatest expense to the lowest wage earners in order to pay those who choose not to work at all
It's not some revealed flaw in capitalism that given short term wages that are the same for working and for doing nothing, that people choose the latter.
I appreciate the alternative perspective and productive-pessimism, but anecdotally in my immediate social circle of engineers, 5 have changed jobs - all for substantial upgrades, and not 1 of them was for a job that required office presence or downgrade in quality of environment.
The last year has been so strong for online tech that there is a heavy vacuum effect on the available talent. FAANG are struggling to fill demand in hiring and are offering increasingly high salaries. This cascades to other industries. Top engineering talent at logistics companies are leaving to go work for big tech, same with banks. Recruiters are charging 22-25% for placements, and having difficulties filling them.
Not just tech, other industries as well. There was this initial moment of employment "musical chairs" when the pandemic set in and everybody who had a job was clinging to it, but we're now in a solid counter-reaction where even traditional industries are having their workforce disrupted by new opportunities. We're not even seeing the full brunt of it, with many industries running at reduced capacity (travel, hospitality, entertainment).
Generally speaking, if people are leaving jobs for new ones (or none...) it's because they calculated that it was for the better, thus, I think people will generally be happier about their state of employment in 2022 as the article states. I'll add that many people working minimum wage jobs took this opportunity to become entrepreneurs which is a really healthy step up from that situation.
These comments about how the market is on fire for developers always make me sad. Not your fault, but outside the US (and maybe western/northern Europe) you get lowballed hard, even with years of experience. And the supposedly lower CoL doesn't make up for it, at all, not even remotely. I'm not even talking about getting crazy bay area compensations, I'm talking about hoping something better than a $25k-$45k range for experienced engineers.
Agreed. My point was more about taking a break or negotiating better QOL. My anecdotal experience is similar to yours in terms of compensation. However, I haven't seen anyone be able to negotiate lower hours, more vacation or periodic employment that would allow them to pursue the 'RE' once they have reached the 'FI' of FIRE.
Lifestyle creep only moves in one direction and is usually permanent.
It depends on your field. I know people whose industries have been on a hiring freeze since last march, and have been applying for almost a year and a half now to the few openings that do appear during this span. Must be a nice time to be a software engineer, though.
Well, this is an ultra-cynical take on the article. It's also a little myopic in the sense that it assumes increased work flexibility must somehow have a high associated cost, such as loss of insurance, or lack of job stability. That just isn't the case.
Although I don't believe that we're about to enter some form of work/life balance utopia, just from my own circle of friends, big changes are inbound.
Firstly, many of us, including me, have for years been told that working from home more than a day a week was an impossibility, and that we should be grateful for that 1 day at all. Although frequently WFH days came with caveats, such as no Mon/Fri WFH, and there was the ever present threat of it being taken away.
Then, along comes the pandemic, and 'lo and behold, I've been working home for over a year without any issue. So have the bulk of the people I know, especially those in the technology sector. All of a sudden the dozens of arguments I have had with clients and employers over the years have all landed firmly on what I have been saying all along; we don't need to be in work every day, hell, we don't even need to be in work every week.
The cat is out of the bag now, and there isn't going to be putting it back in. A lot of the last year has been positive for many, including me. I've seen more of my own daughter in the past year than I've seen in the previous 7 years combined, and I've come to appreciate how important that has been to both of us. I'm not about to let that go without a fight.
Absolutely this. And it showed that the work output itself is better when the knowledge worked is better off. At least for the teams I am interacting with. Less BS time and more good code.
Actually just requested a 4 day work week for the same amount of money. Wish me luck! Seems reasonable to me tho, I can probably provide the same amount of value as if I worked 5 days a week - but who knows maybe they will just give me more work to do instead!
> Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things.
You have to ask yourself, why this is the case. And the simple answer is status quo bias. Many dream of a different life, but few will actually pull the trigger on a major change.
However if a company suddenly changes an established working relationship, then all bets are off the table. If people have gotten used to WFH, and now you make them come into the office, then you’re invalidating the status quo bias. Switching jobs is probably less disruptive to their status quo then going back to the office.
Corporate managers are forgetting a very maxim. Never piss off your employees by taking away something they feel entitled to. It’s the same reason that it’s virtually unheard of to cut salary, even when revenue is collapsing in a deflationary recession.
>Never piss off your employees by taking away something they feel entitled to.
I've read one of the easiest ways to break moral in an office is to simply take away the snacks. Forget nap pods, or walking desks- don't touch my clif bars!!
> It’s the same reason that it’s virtually unheard of to cut salary, even when revenue is collapsing in a deflationary recession
Yes, that’s why companies prefer lay offs rather than broad base salary cuts. Lay offs are a temporary hit to morale, while pay cuts are more permanent. Moreover, in lay offs, you can fire least productive workers, while after pay cut, it’s the most productive that will leave first.
I personally frame any cancelled perq as an effective pay cut. Usually portrayed by management as somehow expected, & as if unearned in the first place, which I find galling. I also had an experienced coworker who pointed out that when the water cooler went away, the company was circling the drain, which my limited experience has borne out.
> Switching jobs is probably less disruptive to their status quo then going back to the office.
Maybe for a little while when there are lots of jobs offering WFH and competing for a small number of people switching jobs. However if you invert that by having lots of jobs simultaneously require people to come back into the office and lots of people simultaneously seeking new employment, then that job hop is likely to be quite difficult. At the very least, most people probably won't be able to line up a new WFH job before they either need to start going into the office or quit and risk extended unemployment. In the long run there will be more WFH opportunities than before the pandemic, but a lot of people are going to have to go into an office whether they want to or not.
> In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE
It's still shocking to me how "chill" this is. "Oh yeah, I'm about to FIRE, no big problem".
Achieving FIRE is such a mind blowing concept to me, Let alone at 25-35!!! Where I live we don't have fat six figure salaries flying around allowing us to accumulate a chunky ETF portfolio to live off of.
Be grateful for what you have achieved!
> Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.
Do you realise how the bottom ~50% of the US workforce lives [1]?! Getting paid six figures or more easily puts you in the top 10% of income earners in the US. Why are you talking as if these should be the norm? They clearly aren't by all metrics. You have such incredible benefits for the work you do, why do you believe you shouldn't feel any privilege or gratitude?
Just a warning to those planning to do this: you are taking an incredible risk with your future that I think is undervalued. Circumstances beyond your control can make your plans financially unviable and by retiring so early you have absolutely no room for error. All it takes is one change in health or a regulation for your whole plan to be instantly invalidated.
For those that have the ability and the desire to retire: congratulations! Please be careful!
Why limit it to the US; there is always going to be someone who is worse off than you on the planet. I think its possible to be grateful that you're not that person, but also complain about things that affect you from time to time. :)
I've realized recently that what I really want isn't FIRE, but a kind of soft FIRE. Basically, if I had the money for FIRE, I would find (or stay at) a job that is comfortable, has great benefits and is low-medium stress. I could forget entirely about job hopping for higher pay (never have to leetcode study again), getting promoted (don't care about more responsibilities, managing, or going up a ladder), and mostly ignore office politics. I could just focus on doing good high quality work and not care about the rest. Basically, I want FIRE money to become immune to any kind of pressure or stress a company could put on an employee since I wouldn't care anymore about being laid off.
COVID has exposed how pathetic the commute-to-work experience is in comparison to working from home. A lot of people are just fine not keeping up a work wardrobe, or getting up every day to get dressed and groomed for work, or driving to the office every day. It personally takes me 45 minutes to get to work on a good day. If my employer tried to force me into the office while I could get a job elsewhere that would allow me to make around the same money to work from home, I'm gone. I'd save about $2500 in gas alone.
And for the record, I love my co-workers. Every single one is a software development veteran, professional in their day to day activities, and is motivated to producing quality work. But I'd still rather work with a knucklehead from time to time than give up the 2+ hours of daily time that going back to the office would require.
> In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'.
Even among my anecdotal very-highly-compensated NYC tech-salary coworkers and friends, having money issues and easily sub $100k net worths is way more common than not.
Of course it's unusual. If you're in SF and work in first tier startups/FAANG, your social circle is going to be mostly people in similar situations. It's a very unusually high earning and unusually rapidly high earning career path.
I would be shocked if in that specific cohort the median net worth at 30 was less than 500 k$. And if less than 1/10 were millionaires at 30.
I didn't have any substantial savings until I was well into my 30s. I didn't graduate from grad school until I was 28. (Worked for a few years prior in engineering but nothing like the salary levels in SWE today.)
Being subject to constraints on your living standards can force you to be more disciplined. I’d bet that there are some in your circle that earn less yet are more financially stable than you would expect. They just don’t talk about it as much, partly out of politeness and partly because they think it’s pretty boring.
Just think, we could all pursue our hopes, dreams and soul satisfying pursuits, if having good health insurance wasn't directly tied to having a "good job".
Dissatisfaction will cause people to move around in the market. I don't know how much I buy the argument that people are looking for WFH, more than that they are looking to not work in a service industry which has low benefits low pay, and no chance of upward mobility.
The pandemic is giving people a chance to realize their career has stalled. I think everyone already knew that the US healthcare system was broken, but maybe people are realizing changing careers is the only way out of that bind.
Tech workers would be fine under any situation, so I don't think it's right to compare your FIRE friends with a cruise ship waiter.
It's important to note that tech workers make up no where close to 40% of all workers, and that most of the people discussed here are lower class seeking upward mobility. Being miserable is just the catalyst for seeking a way out of their situation.
This is me. FIRE was one of the dreams / goals from many years ago. I'm technically able to retire now but I'm still working. A few reasons I think:
1) Sense of (in)security. There is the thought of, what if my investments lose a lot of value. What if costs suddenly go up. So the number keeps shifting up. Just another x dollars and I'll retire.
2) As I get older, the thought of retiring is also starting to lose appeal. Life's priorities change and preferences change. I wanted to be able to not work and travel the world. Now that sounds some what exhausting and unanchored. Personal situation also comes into play. Single vs those in relationships. Will the partner welcome the FIRE lifestyle etc.
3) There is a bit of how society will view a 30 something with no job and no plans to get a job.
Another thing: Work is generally how people best have the opportunity to interact with people operating at a higher degree of sophistication, and it's often where you have a chance to work with people who are smart or motivated.
If you stop working, you risk losing both those networks.
I'm interested by #3, as it is imminently to be my own situation (by choice). The few people who know thus far are all close friends, and even then aren't completely aware that "living off my savings" comes with the additional "and I'm >95% confident that I can do so in perpetuity." My parents think I'll be bored in short order, which may be true. But I've no idea how the rest of society would see it. Envious? Pleased for me? Suspicious of how it was achieved? Something else?
>Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs.
I am far happier in my job and my career. And if my employer decides that they require people to come to the office, then I shall find a different employer who doesn't.
Anecdotal but one of my friends quit an amazing job(good pay, wfh, flexibility, etc...) in search of something better and can’t go 5 minutes without thinking about quitting the new job. I can’t really imagine moving companies right now in the midst of a lot of uncertainly on future office state(maybe that’s just me tho)
What I’ve noticed about the fire people is that they have very unrealistic budgets (static based on what they spend at age 30 often forgetting to include things like healthcare and other forms of insurance, as well as changes in lifestyle). Once you’re in your 40s, and you’re at the peak of your earnings, it’s actually really hard to walk away even if you’ve hit your target. I do know quite a few people first hand who have quit but only in there very late 40s or who made north of $10 million at one point or another.
To your point, stated desire (filling out a survey) isn’t as strong as revealed preference (people switching).
Stated preference is much noisier.
My observation is there are a lot of people who have learned to hate their boss while remote. My SF friends may be surprised that wages are resetting to Chicago and Texas levels for new workers. That may slow down some of the movement.
back in 2015 or so, I was complaining about how having to study for leetcode is not sustainable for someone to live, thus this makes tech a horrendous life choice as a career. Because having to keep doing this throughout our life when we get families and other life events going on is not a sustainable path. I was downvoted, told if you want to make money what's the big deal, etc etc.
During the pandemic, the companies that were still hiring stepped up the bar. Maybe that was the push needed to tell people what the ramifications of this is. Now I am finally hearing from a lot of engineers: "Am I going to have to do this my whole life? I don't want to do this now let alone for the rest of my life". I have dozens of friends from Microsoft to Google plotting their exists.
If all goes well, I am out in 8 years (but things rarely go well). I have a number and once I get to it, I am out. I dont want to deal with this shit anymore
Studying Leetcode is no fun to be sure. But, you'll never find a greater return on investment than preparing well and interviewing well. It often results in a major pay raise, a new and often better company, a new and often better project, sometimes a promotion.
Even better, the people that are the most averse to Leetcode cramming are often the ones that will see the greatest benefit, since they usually entered their current position with a single offer some years ago, and would be getting multiple offers in a very hot market today.
> Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things.
I bet if HC were not employment centered, this would be much different. In the US, it's a badge of honor to have a "job with benefits". Switching jobs and not having HC benefits that are as good or cost more weighs heavy on the minds of most people.
> Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs.
No, people were miserable in their jobs prior to the Covid era. The Covid era just gave them the repose they needed to reframe their job experience and their relationship to their employers. That's a positive development for Americans and their employers.
Just as one counter data point to your observation of your social circles: 2020 made me reconsider things. I also did the maths and concluded I was already the FI part of FIRE. I thought some more about what I wanted to do with my life, stayed several more months to give myself time to reflect on things, and then ultimately resigned with no intention to find another job. I will wrap up in two weeks time.
>In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'.
I think less than 1 in 10 people who talk about FIRE have some kind of realistic expectation about FIRE (i.e. you can't stay in the USA and also live like a king)
You don't really know yourself until you've spent a month or two with ZERO outside obligations. Quite hard to do. I did a couple of multi-month gaps in my 30s.
I guess I fall into the idle fantasy category. I dream of quiting my job. I do look at job postings, but I don't see any better jobs in my area (that I'm even remotely qualified for).
I think shorter work weeks would be more realistic/desirable than full FIRE. However, I suspect most successful FIRE people must develop a or two hobby that inevitably generates money and keeps them busy. Otherwise most will just get bored out of their mind after 1-2 years.
I can’t get over how much the financial media drumbeats the idea that companies compete with better working conditions. They do not on any appreciable timescale - the best you get is a bigger signing bonus or one time benefit. At the top 1% they compete on perks, but the rest simply do not do anything about the fact they can’t hire, despite their complaints. It’s a particular dissonance that I think must come from MBA and business school cargo culting. The world would be such a nicer place if companies actually competed for labor instead of collectively kept all wages and benefits at their absolute minimum. This of course doesn’t happen, but to hear that it is somehow is extra infuriating.
One thing looks good on a balance sheet and the other requires thinking beyond the balance sheet. The vast majority of companies and middle/upper management are really only looking to the short term and their own individual resume. If the cows don't come home to roost (oops mixed the metaphor) for a few years and Jim has already moved from Company A to Company C by then, and failed upward three places on the corporate ladder, why should they care?
Feels like most huge corporations do an executive shakeup every 5-8 years or so, and they shake some people out, but those people just get picked back up by someone else fresh off their own executive shuffle.
I wonder if they really think the powers that be will allow them to retire early. Most will be working until 75+, unless the socialism/automation conspiracy theory comes to fruition.
The powers that be need to start making offers that are harder to refuse for people who don't actually /need/ a job, then. For example, allowing part-time work...
There are a lot of people in tech making a lot of money. Particularly at FANG/startups that have exited, they can "FIRE" after less than 10 years of working. I know many people in this category.
During the pandemic many people also made some changes to their lives (bought a house, moved out the city, moonlight second job, started consulting remotely, etc.).
Then you throw in the crazy rise in the markets (stocks, crypto, real estate) that many people have benefited from.
Coupled with the popularity of FIRE mentality, rise of remote work, etc, it doesn't surprise me there are big changes coming.
I can tell you all the market for devs is white hot at the moment. I mean it was never cold, but right now seems to be insane.
If the work-from-home thing has given you thoughts about what you like, now is the time to go. I see very few firms insisting on onsite work though, having interviewed with quite a few over the last few weeks. Even guys that I know would rather have people in the office and would pay them very well are feeling forced to let people work from home at least a couple of days.
Salary wise it seems like it's breaking upwards too, though of course all I have is my own offers and the word of some recruiters. There's also just a lot of firms out there who are happy to create roles for people they like, or discuss new ventures with new people.
Also, don't forget if you're going to look, absolutely everyone is interviewing remotely. You can sit at home at interviews all day until you find the job for you, something you might not be able to once more firms go back in the office.
This. The WeWorkRemotely posting silicon valley type companies are getting flooded and are quite picky currently. But once you apply to a few jobs elsewhere that have recruiters, you get flooded with small to medium size companies looking for devs. And the market is so hot that companies which previously had longer interview processes are condensing down to 1-2 interviews, because if they take any longer all their applicants have already taken offers elsewhere. For most devs, no matter what you're making someone else would pay you more, and they're willing to do it remotely.
Don't wait on your company to make a remote work plan once they've got you all back in the office. Start looking around now while they don't have a monopoly on your time. That doesn't necessarily mean taking interviews during work hours -- my previous job was 10-6 eastern, and east coast companies would happily interview me at 9, while west coast ones interviewed me at 7. Once your current company has you back in the office, they have a much stronger grasp on you, and they know it. That's why they want everyone back in the office before they talk about remote work.
But if you're not going to a company that is itself 100% remote, I'd still be wary about being the stranger that they only see online. I went with a job where I was only an hour away from the office but could still work remotely, and plan to be there once every couple months, so I still get some face time.
Are you seeing the salaries at these smaller companies keeping up? When I was changing jobs just before the pandemic I also saw a ton of interest from small/med companies, but none with competitive offers. Big, publicly traded tech companies were able to offer more than double total compensation in some cases, and that's with equity you can actually sell for cash.
Weworkremotely just seem to be targeted at "web"-devs judging by filter categories (fullstack, backend, frontend). Is those positions maybe easier to do remotely?
Every time a recruiter (especially internal) reaches out to me lately about "remote until after Covid" I politely tell them I have no intention of ever being forced back into an office every week and good luck with their search. Hopefully they'll realize quickly enough.
Agreed on the salary uptick now. I'm not actively looking, but I'll entertain interesting companies. I've had a lot more companies say "yeah, we can do that" when I tell them I want at least $200k base (8 YOE, full stack developer) than before.
Im not seeing a lot of remote/hybrid offers in the midatlantic area (from my little checking around my area).
It's a lot more "we're remote right now and haven't determined our remote strategy" which like my current place generally means we'll expect you back, but might be a little more lenient on why you need to do a special WFH day.
I've done both full remote and full open office. I think being close enough to go in and get together to determine project path and then going remote to work on it seems to be the way to go. It doesn't look like my current employer believes the same way - even though they are doing very well right now and we're all remote.
That's why people are looking for a new job that will specifically let them work remote. Like anything else, it's easier to get the change you want from a new company than your current one, and you work that out as part of the interview and offer. With the jobs in such demand, companies that wouldn't normally hire remote people will.
Levels says E-7’s at Facebook get a nearly $1,000,000 compensation package
A) Is this annual? As in their unvested RSUs are nearly 4x this amount
B) This is not accounting for stock price appreciation?
or do I have it entirely wrong. Two years ago on Blind I could tell people were discussing their compensation packages in wildly differing ways. It was impossible to tell if people were discussing if they signed an offer that computed a particular dollar value that was only relevant a single year and they just liked to brag about it, or if they were discussing their annual tax filings from employment, or even something else. I feel like this discrepancy translates onto Levels as well.
Base + bonus + annual refresher should be in the 700s annually. Likely the way this gets to $1M is with stocks going up and stacked refreshers (getting a couple annual refreshers while the initial grant is still vesting).
As someone who recently interviewed (although not at Facebook) the number is the _annual compensation package at the time they signed their offer_ (it includes base salary + annual stock grant + bonus). If someone got $1,000,000 in annual compensation 2 years ago, the stock portion per year will likely be larger now due to appreciation of the stock. These numbers are crazy high and before I interviewed this time around I was somewhat skeptic of how real these numbers were outside of a few outliers but now I'm pretty sure it's pretty common.
Can I get an ELI5 on how to even start looking around? I'm someone that contracted via word of mouth for years, and I have zero recruiter relationships. My resume is probably very strong (principle engineer / architect level, strong mentor, JVM/distributed backend, nodejs react typescript frontend) but I haven't updated it for years. I know a lot of recruiters are lousy so I don't want to just cold-call one at random.
First of all, find out where the jobs are. Some board for your niche or something like that. For me it's efinancialcareers. Now efinancial is still a black hole if you try to use it to apply through, but what you're really after is the recruiter details.
You then phone up the rec, or you write to him on LinkedIn. A lot of them are crap at responding, but that's how it is. Phone a few, and convince them that you are the real deal for whatever it is he recruits for.
They'll all want an updated CV. They need it to be able to proceed, nobody will place you without one. Good news is it isn't that hard, just highlight the relevant bits for reach recruiter.
The rec will then say "I've got a job at X, Y, and Z. X is a this kind of co, Y is looking for blah..."
When they have some of those details it means they actually have something. Otherwise it's just a generic company that they will find later. By find, I mean they will forget you by the time the job comes. One guy told me straight up the ad I responded to was not a specific job, it was a honeypot to lure candidates.
So now the companies get your CVs, and they decide whether to interview. If the recruiter is good, they will interview you maybe 3/4 times. Companies often screw up their own internal hiring process and ask for CVs when they aren't ready. But the other companies should be willing to interview you. This is where you find out if the rec is crap, because a fair few of them will just not tell you anything about what happened to your CV.
It's still a numbers game. I've got over 20 recruiters listed on my Trello, most of them did nothing useful for me.
It's probably worth cultivating some relationships with the recruiters. You learn a lot about what the market is doing for free from them.
The forced year of remote has led to both a lot of companies opening up permanent remote work, and a lot of people to change jobs (because their current company doesn't support them remotely well, or because without the social component normalizing their work they've come to question it more). Further, with just the economy reopening, a lot of businesses are opening headcount that they've been sitting on the past year, reluctant to hire due to COVID uncertainties. Taken together, there is a lot of churn. There's a lot of opportunity, but also a lot of competition for roles.
Stocks (and therefore RSUs) are up. I joined a FANG in 2019 with $500k RSUs. Now I have $740k in unvested RSUs, including $600k remaining from the initial grant.
It is here in Australia. I've spoken to a lot of people who are hiring (EY, Accenture and some small-caps) and they all say the same thing - super hard, and expensive to get tech people right now.
How is it for Product Managers and Product Owners? I've seen a slight bump in the past few weeks, but (anecdotally from my monitoring) the number of listings was still higher under Trump in 2019:
They want us back in the office July 16... I'm going to pass so found a new remote role with higher salary and equity. I will be part of this wave. I didn't realy even try with how insane the market is especially if you are specialzed in the current hotness.
Moreso, the rise of fully remote role has opened up our ideas about our current living situation. The real estate market in our city is shattered and broken. So we will also move 60 miles south to a different city... before the pandemic I was remote and missed the office. Post pandemic... fuck the office and 1+ hour commutes purely because the city, state, and country have mismanaged infrastructure for 20 years.
Any software company that’s ending remote work right now is basically risking its entire existence. There’s no possible way, in this market, a company will be able to replace 10% of its workforce in a reasonable time. I can understand why management wants to go back to the office, but why would you ever take the risk of being one of the first, before gauging how the market will react.
I mean things will probably settle down in 6-12 months. But that's a problem for companies trying to hire today, who need to get shit done in the next 6-12 months
Mostly for more junior people, be very careful with this. Even if companies make sure promotions happen equally for on-site and remote, you'll learn everything slower. This could be new technology, a new language, or things about the company's infrastrucutre, but it will all be slower, and don't be surprised when people who are on-site seem better at their jobs.
Depends on how you learn. Personally I've alway been ultra self taught. Even in university would only show up for lectures if I didnt understand the material in the text book. Else I basically just followed the syllabus and got reasonably good grades.
Some are more hands on though and prefer social learning ("show me how to do it..."). To each their own, but I personally learn faster when left alone than when someone tries to put me through their "course".
Please don't spread FUD. I was onsite and still learned slower. It all depends on your team and documentation. I mentor people remotely and they have been successful
Mine is returning part time on July 19th. When asked if we're more productive in the office vs at home we were told flat out "we don't have that data".
My commute is 5 miles. 30 minutes by bike (on a few sketchy roads) or 15 minutes by car. I need to time out which is actually faster end-to-end. I setup an office in my house pre-pandemic (It's gaming room with dual monitors on a desktop PC I built in college) 3x the space, a couch and much closer walk to the bathroom. I'm sad to give it up now.
This is about far more than WFH vs Return To Office.
Many of us, after a year of lockdowns, losing family members, suffering mental and physical health issues, spending more time with our families, etc. are re-evaluating our priorities in life and deciding that our jobs are no longer the most important things in life and probably never should have been.
Higher education is my main job - we're not seeing an influx like we expected of people returning to college, but we are seeing an increase in non-traditional (24y.o.+) students.
They are, to paint with a very broad brush, folks who all worked in food service, retail, or other front-line sales industries. The forced time off last year made them realize they were killing themselves for not very much money, and they're refusing to go back to those employers.
But it's the $300 in weekly payments that is stopping people from returning to work, if you ask business owners in the area.
There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don't know why.
A lot of people were told their jobs are nonessential and the public debate was about whether or not they deserve assistance with basic survival needs. If it were me, I’d be doing everything in my power to never be in that position again. I suspect that’s part of what’s happening.
There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don't know why.
Largely because business owners are pushing the "$300/month is making everybody lazy" narrative. There doesn't appear to be much evidence it's true, at least not to the extend business owners would have us believe.
I was looking around recently, particularly at startups, but then chose to stop. Here is my reasoning:
* I am currently employed with great benefits. If I am going to throw that away there needs to be something of value in exchange: leadership position, architecture, or some other increase of responsibilities. I wasn’t seeing this.
* If your primary platform or language is JavaScript everybody wants a tool jockey. They claim to want somebody full stack. But when you really press for details the really want somebody to do react on the front end and play around with their cloud provider. The services piece in the middle is where things get strained in a full stack interview. If tools are the direction of work I have already lost interest. Why would I want to give up stable employment with great benefits to wire tools together? I would rather just stare out the window.
* The idea of a senior engineer is incredibly convoluted. It sounds like people want somebody who can mentor in a vacuum. You can only mentor so much about dicking around with tools. If you try to mentor past that and the culture is just go dick around with tools you are either mentoring too much or not enough. Either way you are a horrible senior incompatible to the new organization. Worse is when they ask you to guide and train junior developers without leadership support. Really if that should work beyond vague hints you need a title. Excellent juniors have a passion for learning but many juniors aren’t excellent, just want a paycheck, and feel insecure when challenged.
From going through the exact same conversation several times in a row I get the impression many employers kind of know what they want to build, kind of guess at what they need, and completely guess at what qualifies as execution planning but cannot put any of that together into a single vision.
Regarding your second point, I think it's good to know what interests you, but there's a lot of quality ideas out there that don't have hard tech components, and if they invent hard tech problems to keep their engineers interested, they're probably not going to last very long.
IMHO, the "all JavaScript tech stack, connected together by a cloud provider via tooling" pattern is probably among the faster ways to get an idea from inside someone's head and in front of customers, all of the longer term problems aside.
To me personally, the "challenge" comes from being able to do all of that quickly and seamlessly, basically solid execution becomes the fun part.
Oh, also I would love to make a bunch of money relatively quickly. :)
IMO the only way to make that stuff engaging is to move "up" a level and be the one picking the tools to solve the problem, interacting with users/clients, that kind of thing. Basically, start your own business or become a product manager at a place where product manager is a fairly expansive role.
Otherwise, I agree, it's all of: fucking boring; frustrating; and unrewarding. But, it's also most of the market for developers. :-/
The business should be inventing the problems, because that is (hopefully) driving the revenue that keeps you employed. Usually the business has all kinds of wonderful ideas of which some are practical and vetted while others are a distraction. If you are thinking in terms of automation, internal training, and service fulfillment you probably aren't properly aligning solutions to expense reduction. The benefit of writing original software is innovation and IP (even if open source and liberally licensed) that can generate additional revenue for the business.
If you current approach is entirely dependent upon tools it will be boxed in to a set of configurations and flexibility is lost. From what I have seen on HN the greatest challenge for most early stage startups is finding product-market fit, which means you need to pivot at a moment's notice. That ability to pivot is far more significant than whether you can have a website up in 2 days versus 2 weeks.
What do you mean by “tools”? Generally I think of “tools” as anything that assists you in building, deploying, or operating a (production) service, but not the service itself. For my definition, the firebase CLI is a tool, but Google Cloud Firestore (a no-SQL data store) is not. At the places you talked to, was everything service-y left to a separate back-end/infra team?
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?
I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing.
edit: thank you all for advice, encouragement as well as for cautious pessimism. By the amount of upvotes Im hoping Im not the only one doing this. See you out there!
>I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing.
You hear a heck of a lot more about it on HN than happens in reality.
Maybe I don't hang out with the trust fund crowd enough but I don't know ANYONE who's taken a "gap year" where they weren't doing something for ~40hr/wk in order to make a buck. I know a few people who didn't jump right into career stuff after college but even they did low pay large applicant pool type jobs at least tangentially related to their careers (e.g. working as basically unskilled labor on tourist fishing charters in Miami before getting a real entry level job on a container ship). Heck, even the people who took a year off before college were doing stuff tangentially related to their career/skillset in that time (e.g. working for geek squad prior to going to school for CE). I know a couple people who went from full time to part time or to less demanding jobs in their field prior to retirement. I know a couple people who did jobs not related to their vocational training for less than a year after they got out of the military but that was more of a stopgap to keep a roof over their head. I don't know anyone who's gone from full time to part time or less unless it's part of a career transition or approach to retirement. I'm sure there's someone somewhere who's managed to pay their rent by waiting tables and stripping for a grand total of 15hr/wk and spent the rest of the time doing art or writing a book or something. I'm sure there's someone who's banked a ton of money and taken a year off in the middle of their career. I don't know anyone who's pulled something like that off.
I guess we have different social circles, but I know many people who have done this and none of them are "trust fund crowd". Have done it myself for multiple half-year-or-so periods as well. Maybe it's more of a European thing to do.
I spent 3 months as a research assistant in Australia and used savings from that period to travel in South-East Asia and South America for 6 months or so. Shortly after graduating, having saved a bit as a student (again - Europe, I managed without student debt, having done web development next to my studies), I went to a conference in Taiwan with my MSc thesis and traveled back home over land. Then after working a little bit on my first job again I traveled, hitchhiking to/through the Middle East and Russia.
It's all very doable if you don't spend a lot - during many of these trips I spent $400-$1000/month.
Highly recommend it, traveling in Turkey/Iran/Oman/Georgia/Russia/Ukraine definitely shaped my perspective on the world.
You're on a discussion board filled with software developers and tech employees generally. The vast majority of such workers make a lot of money. If you're working in tech and you can't bank enough to take 6m-1yr off, you're doing your finances wrong. It doesn't require a trust fund to avoid the hedonic treadmill and save up.
I learnt of this sort of thing only after I moved to the UK, where it's traditional for wealthy and middle-upper-class kids to take a long break between college and university - a habit that probably comes from the times of the "grand tours" of continental Europe in XVIII and XIX century.
I've met people who do it on a 6-months basis - 6 months travelling, 6 months earning. They don't make much, their career is somewhat stalled, it would have probably ended when/if they had a kid, but they did it. They were conscious that they were sacrificing something (money, comforts) in exchange for this lifestyle.
It's interesting reading the comments on HN because, although everyone isn't making say $300-600k+ TC/yr here, I think it's safe to assume the TC distribution shifts the median earner here safely above the median US earner, perhaps by even a multiple of two. This, in theory means if you lived a lifestyle akin to a median labor earner, you should only need to work about half the amount--part time, every other year, FIRE / retire early strategies and so on.
Most the advice is quite the opposite (and I would agree with them). To me, this really shows just how toxic the control is across the labor force. Job mobility is about the only vote or voice you have if you're in the labor force and if empty positions can be readily filled, you have no voice. The only reason things are interesting now is because the mass layoffs and turnover haven't been well stagged due to the pandemic so labor has more leverage. When true unemployment returns to norms, positions are largely re-filled, and attrition begins to follow traditional rates, the voice of the labor market voting will their feet will again fall on deaf ears and your voice will again disappear in the noise. It would take another global catastrophe to change this balance and give labor a voice again.
I know quite a few people from various background (finance, multinational corporations, non-profits) doing things like these. Depends on employer. In hindsight always regarded as one of the best decisions of their lives (along with reducing workload to 80%, usually 4 days/week).
We all know that once old, the amount of money earned/saved will mean absolutely nothing in terms of happiness/achievement. Work achievements for office type jobs mean mean even less. The life lived well will mean everything. So some act accordingly when/if possible.
I haven't done gap year myself, but did a shorter variant - 2 times 3 months backpacking around India and Nepal. Remote Himalaya in the north, swimming in coral reefs on Amdamans, Thar desert in the west, and thousands of years of history, culture and people to meet everywhere in between. I still barely scratched the surface of what this place can offer.
Literally the best decision in my life. It changed me for the better. It motivated me to make changes in my career, go for consulting, move to Switzerland etc.
Have met tons of people from all over the world who were like this - traveling like this for 3-24 months, and then continuing work/study/beginning someplace else.
These trips I've done when having a pretty high mortgage and very little savings, and they both meant losing at least 2 salaries each time while expenses mounted. No rich family to cover for me anyhow if I would hit the financial wall. Still well worth the risk. If one doesn't have kids yet, there is practically nothing to lose with doing this, just gain.
> Maybe I don't hang out with the trust fund crowd enough
I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of people taking a gap year, especially people in tech. The industry pays well relatively early and there is a surplus of jobs. If you keep your expenses low relative to your salary, don't let your lifestyle inflate beyond your means, and are fortunate enough not to be burdened with debt, health problems, or other large expenses, a gap year seems completely doable.
I think failure to save money is by far the most likely reason sabbaticals are uncommon, though I've been told by hiring managers they're more common in tech than you'd think. There's also probably some stigma against being unemployed, especially in professional circles, as well as fear of the dreaded "resume gap." As far as I can tell, that concern is fairly overblown for those in tech as well.
I did. I took a year and sailed. Sold my house and used some savings. I couldn't have done it if I had kept my house though. I was mid 30's at the time (40 now). I don't work in the valley though, I just do data and analytic design for corporations so finding a new job only took a week when I moved back to Columbus, OH after sailing.
While I did figure out I didn't love single handing a sailboat long term I don't regret any part of that year. I came back significantly happier than I was.
In Germany, gap years after school or sometimes university are pretty common (at least for the middle class). They do often work, but rarely in a field related to what they studied or want to do. Instead, it’s travel-financing jobs.
It used to be that it was more a thing for women, but that probably changed since draft was abandoned (before that the gap year for men would usually have been military service or alternative civilian service)
You do not need to be a trust fund kid to travel the world cheaply. I did when I was 23 (2004-ish) and realized I didn't like working. Took out a credit card with 5k credit limit, saved money for a month or two (I was making 40k so not exactly tons). Bought a ticket to Eastern Europe, kicked around hostels for a few months, when I finally almost ran out of money, bought a ticket back. I met other people who picked up side jobs in hostels or bars to help cover their costs too.
What you can't do is continue to have an expensive quality of life if you're no longer producing income.
I did. I took almost a year off. It cost me about $35k in 2005 USD.
I was really burnt out. But I'm not sure that taking the time did anything for me. I was a little stressed about the "unknown" the whole time and I mostly wish I had left that money in my savings.
A good fraction of people I’ve come across in uni in the US have taken gap years (or just take forever to finish college). This is not normal for regular immigrants these days. I did not have saturdays off from when I was 15 till I turned 32. Even then I was in a tech job which had great vacation but still not months at a time. It’s literally alien for folks like us to have an entire year where we don’t need to report to anything at all. I wish the OP the best, I’m still waiting for the day I can do the same but that’s at least years away.
I have many rock climbing friends who live on less than 15k a year. They often do it for years, working seasonally 3-5 months a year. the trick is to go somewhere with a very cheap lifestyle. It can be accomplished by living in your car in the mountains, or traveling to SE Asia, etc. The climbing provides something to do and a sense of community.
There are other cultures like this. I’ve seen kids from Europe doing a gap year staying in hostels for very little (they sometimes do some light work for the hostel to get a free place to stay)
I only heard about it from friends here in UK, and they would typically do it between collage and uni. Thats when I came here and had to start working to support myself.
Pretty common for a sizeable portion of high school graduates in Australia to take a gap year either immediately after graduation or after their first year of uni
Here in the UK _most_ of the people I met at university didn't know gap years were an option. Post university it's been the same. The few who do take it absolutely love it. I personally didn't know either until I met a few people at university who got to the UK through the Erasmus programme.
It's sad really. As a young person this is the time to be able to do it. Often as you get older life gets in the way. I've been wanting to do it ever since I found out about it but every time something else has gotten in the way. If you're young and reading this, and everything has aligned for you, take a gap year or two.
You might be surprised by what is possible when you set goals and live below your means. You might also be surprised by how little money it costs to take off a year mid-career.
When I finished university, I had a few weeks between graduation and my start date at a well known Midwestern embedded electronics company. I had a $7k signing bonus and I found a $500 round trip ticket to Rome, so I went to Rome. While I was there, I learned about the world of backpacking and hostels. I ended up spending 6 weeks in Europe before returning home. During that time I decided that travel was something I wanted to pursue in my life.
The salary at my entry level SWE job was $58k, which was pretty modest. I didn’t buy a new car. I didn’t buy a new house. I cooked most meals at home and I brought lunch to work. I tracked my expenses and budget using Mint, and set a goal to save $30k so I could leave and travel in SE Asia where I calculated the daily burn rate should be around $30/day. After three years I hit my savings goal and bought a one way ticket to Hawaii, then from Hawaii to Thailand. I ended up spending over a year outside of the country and returned home with a $10k cushion to get back on my feet.
The biggest leg up I had was graduating with $2000 in student loan debt, but that was made possible mostly through merit based scholarships. No trust fund.
I inspired a friend to do the same thing, except with a destination of Australia on a working holiday visa. Also no trust fund, just living below his means and saving over time.
My advice to you is to find a way to do the things you want to do instead of limiting yourself with beliefs that only the ultra-rich can take time off from work to pursue personal passions.
This differs by gender. A married woman taking time off for domestic/child rearing/continuing education is very common. An adult male, it’s very uncommon unless you’re rich, which most posters here obviously are.
You hear a heck of a lot more about it on HN than happens in reality.
In my industry, and the one my wife works in, if you have a gap year it's a red flag that makes potential employers wonder if you got fired from your last job and just aren't listing it, or did time in prison, or are simply unreliable.
It's great that in the tech bubble people don't think much about gap years. But in the real world, they can doom your chances of getting a new job.
Especially since these days you don't get to explain the gap since your application is vetted, filtered, and ranked by a computer and not a person.
It’s not very difficult to do financially if you don’t mind moving to a lower cost of living country. You can live pretty well for 20k USD in many parts of the world.
Few do that in France. Is it because we already have plenty of PTO (5 weeks, plus often 12 more days because the legal week is 35 hours but we usually do more)?
Anyway, I took a gap time at age 36 for a 3 months trip in South America. And this allowed me to take an turn in my career when I came back.
well, it's not usual for first-gen immigrants doing a gap year unless rich, so i applaud parent for living his dream. it's pretty usual in western europe for middle-class children doing this.
I left my job in May and I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail now. I saved more than enough for living in a tent for 5 months (admittedly the tent was expensive but I already had it). So far it's been great. I've met a lot of folks who are burned out and taking some time to think.
If long-distance hiking appeals, I'd be happy to discuss it.
I had a buddy who disappeared for 6 months after our deployment, who we eventually found out was just hiking the Appalachian trail. It ended up being very helpful for him, and it’s something I’ve considered for myself on occasion.
That sounds superb and I wish you good luck and lots of trail magic. The AT looks beautiful (I've only seen pictures of it in blogs).
Forests are wonderful. I grew up around forests, playing in them as a child. A few years ago while day hiking in a forest I came to a Sun-warmed opening in pine barrens from amidst taller pines. That specific scent of the ground and the pines etc., the heat and the wind -- all these, but mostly the strong scent, took me vividly back to my childhood. I remembered so many things as if I were there again, I saw these memories just flowing at me. For a moment, I was transported back to my grandparents place at a summer when I was 6-8 years old. I felt how much they loved me and what a good and carefree place I had been in.
For some time, I stood there in awe with my mouth open, trying to process what just happened. It was such a powerful influx of memories.
I don't know if you've experienced something like this, but I hope you will! Maybe some years from now your hike will come back to you.
My brother and I both got burnout last year and picked up thru-hiking, albeit more of the weekend warrior (3-7 days) variety. It has been a life-changer for both of us. We are planning on hiking part of the PCT for a month next year.
Have you done something like this before or was this on a whim?
Trying to figure out how much training / prep one needs to do. I want to do long distance cycling, I am not concerned about the stamina. I am concerned about camping in the wild, packing and repairing the bicycle when it breaks.
A 6 month gap was the healthiest emotional choice I ever made. Just be prepared that you have no idea how you'll react to it until you do it. I strongly recommend setting very light goals for the first month while you adjust, otherwise you'll stress yourself out.
I've done two 366 photo-a-day projects (the first was in 2012, the second was 2020). Last year was simultaneously the worst and best time to do one; worst because of obvious reasons, but best because it was a quarantine monotony barometer ("monotometer") and helped me plan my days so that at least one interesting photographable thing would happen. I definitely felt burnout and oversharing, but I'd probably do it again and just keep the photos in a private album or print them immediately.
I recommend traveling. See all the places, you want to see, with no pressure of having to go back to work by a fixed date, soon. Meet people, make new connections, chances are, you will find new opportunities to work, along the way.
Bonus points, if you have all your stuff packed somewhere and not have to pay any rent. But it depends what you want, if you like your home, keep it. Have projects in your home ...
There are lots of things to be done. Doing nothing is also fine for a while, but gets booring very soon and puts you in lethargic state ... wasting your time.
I took 3 years off, didn’t do anything other than read, watch tv, go to the movies, and walk/ride my bicycle. Never traveled once. Loved every minute of it.
Doing nothing doesn’t get boring for everyone. And it’s my time not yours so who’s to say what a waste is?
My biggest advice is to do what you want and don’t feel like you have to live up to some HN-gap-year fantasy. You might regret sitting in your apartment surfing the internet (I didnt) but you might also regret traveling. It’s your time. Do what you want.
Obviously "the West" is a big place and there are lots of cultures and in-groups within it.
I can tell you as a non-elite, middle-class American that I've almost never heard of someone taking a gap year after beginning professional work. The one case that comes to mind was an ex's father who was burnt out on his accountant career. He took a year to follow his dreams on music-related stuff, which didn't pan out in terms of turning a passion into a career, and he went back to being an accountant (also, after causing his wife and kids some stress related to running low on money).
I did however take a 6 week gap between jobs a few years back. I think things like that are common enough. I flew to Costa Rica, intending to spend a month backpacking around the country ... and honestly I got kind of bored after 2 weeks so I flew home early. Then I hopped in the car and drove cross-country at my own pace, seeing sights that I wanted to see, etc. Absolutely one of my favorite memories and I'd love to do something similar again.
The important thing to remember is that this is for your growth, happiness, and well-being. You set the rules for your time off. If you travel the whole time or stay at home, or a mix, that's your call. If you do something to try to set yourself up for your next opportunity professionally or you completely stay away anything related to your profession, that's up to you. Don't follow a path just because you think it'll look good on Instagram or because you think it'll sound cool when you talk about it at parties in the future. (Or do, if those are high enough priorities for you). Good luck!
As an European tech-sphere data point: it seems somewhat normal to travel the world for half a year before your first job. Gap time later on is not so common. Still, I can easily name five colleagues who took one to six months off, some as unpaid vacation, some between jobs.
Personally, six weeks sounds more like an extra-long vacation. I always took four to six months off before looking for a new job, or when on-job an unpaid month or two every other year. But that's definitively nowhere near the norm, many people don't understand it. I usually end up coding 20h per week on geek projects or random open source stuff. After six months I predictably get bored with it.
I rarely end up doing the project I planned to do. So if you want any advice from me: Don't force yourself to do what you thought you wanted to do, before you had time. Look around and don't feel guilty for following that new interest you just discovered.
>I did however take a 6 week gap between jobs a few years back.
I've never had enough time off between (my few) jobs since grad school. The circumstances have never been quite right. I did get a 3-4 week vacation the last time and that was mostly because I had done everything except pull the trigger while waiting to see if an offer came through--then pushed things out as far as I could.
I actually had a month off the prior time as well but that was because of a post-9/11 layoff. As it turned out a conversation I had with someone I knew pretty much the following day panned out. But I didn't know that of course and it wasn't the time to just head off and vacation.
I didn't do a gap year either. I left education at 16 and immediately went into FTE and have been there ever since (for longer than I dare count) and now that I am all wrapped up in a mortgage and kids I'm not sure I'll be taking a gap year any time soon (voluntarily, anyway!)
FWIW I have worked with several colleagues who took a gap year and never stopped. They pick up remote contract work along their travels and continue living the life of a modern day nomad. Not one of them is unhappy :)
Maybe not this directly, but I expect more people quitting "megacorp" jobs, will lead to another big wave of "innovation" in tech in the next few years as people spin up small companies to 'scratch that itch' they've had for a while.
I have taken a year off before and a couple of months in between jobs. I think many of us have undergone once-in-a-lifetime type of stress in the past year that few would consider taking some time off as toxic. We all processed the events of the past year differently, and we all coped in different ways, but it still took a toll. I would encourage taking time off.
The one major issue of taking some time off right now to travel is that it is incredibly difficult to do so. Many countries are still closed, or if open, have some sort of curfew. In the US, national parks are overwhelmed with tourists. If traveling solo, social distancing (either laws or new culture) makes it difficult to connect with strangers.
I haven't taken a gap year myself but a good friend took a six month unpaid travel-leave period in the company we both used to work for. He had a great time. When he finished and got back into work he realised that his break very similar to a female employee taking maternity leave. As it happened, our company was quite good with maternity leave, and many of the women who took it resumed very successful careers. So, perhaps worth checking at your own place to see how maternity leave is handled.
He didn't notice any long term career effects although he had to re-establish himself somewhat with new people and projects that had appeared in his absence.
> When he finished and got back into work he realised that his break very similar to a female employee taking maternity leave.
I have not met a single woman who would compare maternity leave to a travel leave and a “great” time.
Infants are a ton of work, and between recovering from the birthing process (a vaginal tear with a few stitches is considered one of the best outcomes), learning how to breastfeed, only sleeping 2 hours at a time due to breastfeeding, diastesis recti ruining your abs and making your core weak, pain from clogged milk ducts, pumping breast milk for storage since the US does not provide adequate leave so the kid has to go in daycare, hemorrhoids for a good portion of women, etc.
I have no doubt anyone who has been through this would rather work an office job for 6 months.
I've done this twice: the first time back in 2007 when I got made redundant and decided to use the time and money to study and indulge in my dream of writing a book; more recently (which is still ongoing) to recover from burnout and rediscover the joy of coding.
I do not consider this time to be "gap year", but rather an investment in, and a reward for, myself. Why do I need such luxuries? Because time is short and nothing is destined. None of us are guaranteed to make it to retirement age. My Dad died when he was 54; my brother when he was 53. My sister survived her heart attack when she was 60 - luckily it happened when she was at work; she was a cleaner at a hospital.
Keep a roof over your head, make sure you have enough food to live on. Don't leave it until the last minute to start looking for paid work. Most importantly, enjoy your time away from the capitalist treadmill - with good fortune this can become an investment in yourself that you'll never regret!
I’m about 15 months into my “gap year,” similar story (except no immigration). I traveled on the cheap, switched careers, found a new city I love (and is way cheaper), and settled down with my gf.
Word of warning: depending on what kind of friends and family you have, you might lose some people along the way. Taking a leap like that brought out a new side of people I thought I knew. Most were supportive, but some not at all. Focus on the “keepers” instead of the “haters,” stay positive, and enjoy it!
Huh. Funny that you mention it. I decided this exact same thing for myself this winter, and just started. Same reasoning too. Is it only among technologists who have great recent returns in the stock market, or is this a wider trend?
In 2016 I took about half a year off, staying in Thailand and working on my hobby projects.
Was one of the best, most happy periods in my life.
It made me more focused on trying to reach early “retirement” so I can work fulltime on my hobbies. Hopefully I can achieve this goal before I’m 45 years old.
I never too time off. Even not between from job to owning a business.
During the early Covid lock down was the best time. Had a really good sleep. Learned cooking. Biked with my son everyday. Walked in the evening everyday.
Right before the covid-19, I visited my parents for a month in India and didn't do anything. Screen time reduced to 1-2 hrs a day - hardly any emails, no business calls, no Reddit, no HN or no news. That was the best time. Slept from 10pm - 6am everyday.
I'm considering this too but I might just wait till the beginning of 2022 hoping thats when the entire world opens up. I can't break my lease before November, so that helps me stay at my job. So many ideas though for 2022,
1. Cycle Eurovelo 6
2. Drive through the Pan American Highway
3. Learn different things at different places, Muay Thai in Thailand, surfing in Bali, Kali in the Philipines
4. Just travel doing nothing for a few months and then try 12 month 12 startups or something.
Same same!. I am going to start my gap yea in September and focus on finally getting that ski instructor certification that i've been dreaming about for years.
I am going to start off my gap year with full time skiing and working on side projects on off/rest days and evenings.
FYI, frame this as freelance consulting when you apply for your next job. You can talk about wanting something new and striking out on your own for a bit.
IMO what you find out is a year is a long time without work from a time perspective. Hope you enjoy your year off!
Just chiming in that I absolutely detest this way of thinking. This isn’t a dig at you personally, but against the idea of living or presenting your life as some series of neatly explainable resume bullet points. I have been susceptible to it myself to a greater or lesser degree throughout my career.
> I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing.
As a Westerner, I have never taken a gap year but I never met anyone who took one and wish they didn't. If you can make it work, take it, especially after the Pandemic because it's going to be an awesome time to travel.
If you have the financial means to do so, I highly recommend taking a gap year. It was a very rewarding time for me - just working on projects that interested me (tech and non-tech) and at my own pace, instead of racing towards arbitrary deadlines set by the employer. It was also the time where I could actually learn some new skills, which is quite difficult when you have a full time job. I cannot wait for the next time I can take a year off!
I did something similar between school and a job, but it wasn't so much intentional as acute burnout.
In tech, we luckily have the luxury to take time off and recover when we need to.
I worked on some closed source personal projects and worked on getting into shape. When I was ready to return, the employer didn't really care that I had taken time off.
I’ve not taken a gap year or heard of anybody else that has either. My peers and I are all 1-2 jobs out of college, and we’re all terrified of having a gap in our resume. Apparently this concern is overblown, but we all seem to have learned it from our parents.
Gap years, or as they used to be called sabaticals, are common once you reach 8+ years of experience. If you are a good engineer, you can take mutiple years, and still be ok, as long as you keep your skills sharp. (i.e. have some kind of personal project that you work during those times)
> we’re all terrified of having a gap in our resume
I took a 1 year break and have had to answer a simple recruiter/interview inquiry regarding it for the next 5 years. I don't think it ever eliminated me from consideration but it was more like a necessary precaution. Not so great answers would include:
* Anything beginning with "uh uh uh". Answer confidently.
* "I was searching for work the whole time and just couldn't pass interviews"
* criminal activity
* anything indicating a bad work ethic or difficult employee
* apathy, indifference, numb, lazy. Even if you felt that way the whole time, LIE. You took a year off, you want to look like you had an undying passion for something every day even a hobby.
When hiring I totally Want gaps in people's resumes. I've even asked people who hadn't why and whether they really want to be looking for work right now at all.
I honestly try to maximize humanity, unhappy people can't do good work.
Careful with gap years to clear your plate to work on slower pace stuff - if you're anything like me, you'll have trouble doing the one thing day in and day out. Even with full freedom, it is hard to manage one's output
>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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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 :-).
> 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.
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%.
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.
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_
I'm not sure I believe the conclusion based on the survey. Resigning and "thinking about quitting [your] job" are very different things. I've spent my whole working life thinking about quitting but I've rarely actually quit, the pandemic hasn't changed that.
I suspect what the authors are presuming is a relationship between the variable "proportion of workers thinking about quitting" and the variable "near future quitting rate".
Imagine if I told you that the number of people "thinking of buying a Tesla" had gone up dramatically. Now, most people can't afford a Tesla, so no, not everyone is going to buy a Tesla. But if overall the proportion of people thinking about it went up, you wouldn't be surprised if the number of Tesla sales went up soon, and would probably be surprised if it fell.
What I'm saying here is that it would be weird if those two variables are completely independent.
But that's kind of the point - the article is not saying that the proportion of workers thinking about quitting has gone up dramatically. They're saying that "25% to upwards of 40%" are thinking about this, but it seems a completely reasonable rate even in normal conditions, for all we know it may not be an increase at all.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about quitting and have had 6 jobs in 14 years. The first 1-2 years of employment is usually fairly interesting and then you hit a rut in which you're no longer learning, IMO.
The difference is that there’s not normally a mass catalyst like the end of WFH. Many people think of quitting their job, few actually do.
That’s largely because of status quo bias. People don’t like to make any major changes to their life situation unless prompted. But if a company exists on ending the WFH arrangements that people have become accustomed to over the past year, all bets are out the window.
I know a lot of people who are looking for alternative jobs because their companies expect a full return to the office. They are all looking for more flexible, or remote-first, employers.
Well, I can finally say it: I'm part of the Great Resignation.
I found a new position that's 100% remote, I put in my notice at my current job the week before last, and my last day is coming up this week.
It's kind of bittersweet: I'm leaving just before my fifth anniversary here, and this is the only company where I've even made it to three years, much less five, but it is what it is. I like what I do, and I like my coworkers, but I just can't go back to working in an office after spending the last year working from home, so it's time for me to move on.
Readit News
This number is meaningless without previous year trends. In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'. Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things. (edit: to clarify, I mean changing jobs specifically in the context of making inroads toward the retire early portion of their goal. Changing jobs to increase compensation is as strong as ever)
Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs. The only way people can keep going is idle fantasies about a nondescript future date where this suffering ends.
> Workers have had more than a year to reconsider work-life balance or career paths
IMO, over the last year, people have only dived deeper into their delusions and relative sense of privilege. Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.
> "Hopefully we’ll see a lot more people in 2022 employed and stable because they're in jobs they actually like," she says.
Press 'X' to Doubt
Small quibble: Covid has shown people how miserable their jobs have always been.
All it's taken is a slight shift, a small perk, here and there, and people see it clear as day, and they want out. White collar workers got work from home: actually, it turns out I can give legal advice while planting basil in my backyard and no one on the conference call either notices or gives a shit. Blue collar workers got unemployment benefits that pay a living wage without needing to work 3 jobs and die of an early heart attack worrying about how they'll feed their kids.
I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up in the last year, and it's cause for celebration.
Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset. People hadn't noticed, and now they have.
It'll probably happen all over again, but at least there's hope for now.
Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society by working are eroded and redistributed to those who don't wish to work.
If it keeps up, soon we'll all be poor, nobody will earn a living wage, but at least it will be equitable!
Don't forget that printing money for stimulus checks is borrowing at greatest expense to the lowest wage earners in order to pay those who choose not to work at all
It's not some revealed flaw in capitalism that given short term wages that are the same for working and for doing nothing, that people choose the latter.
The last year has been so strong for online tech that there is a heavy vacuum effect on the available talent. FAANG are struggling to fill demand in hiring and are offering increasingly high salaries. This cascades to other industries. Top engineering talent at logistics companies are leaving to go work for big tech, same with banks. Recruiters are charging 22-25% for placements, and having difficulties filling them.
Not just tech, other industries as well. There was this initial moment of employment "musical chairs" when the pandemic set in and everybody who had a job was clinging to it, but we're now in a solid counter-reaction where even traditional industries are having their workforce disrupted by new opportunities. We're not even seeing the full brunt of it, with many industries running at reduced capacity (travel, hospitality, entertainment).
Generally speaking, if people are leaving jobs for new ones (or none...) it's because they calculated that it was for the better, thus, I think people will generally be happier about their state of employment in 2022 as the article states. I'll add that many people working minimum wage jobs took this opportunity to become entrepreneurs which is a really healthy step up from that situation.
This has been the case, according to my colleagues who are older, since at least 2003 ;-)
Lifestyle creep only moves in one direction and is usually permanent.
Although I don't believe that we're about to enter some form of work/life balance utopia, just from my own circle of friends, big changes are inbound.
Firstly, many of us, including me, have for years been told that working from home more than a day a week was an impossibility, and that we should be grateful for that 1 day at all. Although frequently WFH days came with caveats, such as no Mon/Fri WFH, and there was the ever present threat of it being taken away.
Then, along comes the pandemic, and 'lo and behold, I've been working home for over a year without any issue. So have the bulk of the people I know, especially those in the technology sector. All of a sudden the dozens of arguments I have had with clients and employers over the years have all landed firmly on what I have been saying all along; we don't need to be in work every day, hell, we don't even need to be in work every week.
The cat is out of the bag now, and there isn't going to be putting it back in. A lot of the last year has been positive for many, including me. I've seen more of my own daughter in the past year than I've seen in the previous 7 years combined, and I've come to appreciate how important that has been to both of us. I'm not about to let that go without a fight.
You have to ask yourself, why this is the case. And the simple answer is status quo bias. Many dream of a different life, but few will actually pull the trigger on a major change.
However if a company suddenly changes an established working relationship, then all bets are off the table. If people have gotten used to WFH, and now you make them come into the office, then you’re invalidating the status quo bias. Switching jobs is probably less disruptive to their status quo then going back to the office.
Corporate managers are forgetting a very maxim. Never piss off your employees by taking away something they feel entitled to. It’s the same reason that it’s virtually unheard of to cut salary, even when revenue is collapsing in a deflationary recession.
I've read one of the easiest ways to break moral in an office is to simply take away the snacks. Forget nap pods, or walking desks- don't touch my clif bars!!
Yes, that’s why companies prefer lay offs rather than broad base salary cuts. Lay offs are a temporary hit to morale, while pay cuts are more permanent. Moreover, in lay offs, you can fire least productive workers, while after pay cut, it’s the most productive that will leave first.
Maybe for a little while when there are lots of jobs offering WFH and competing for a small number of people switching jobs. However if you invert that by having lots of jobs simultaneously require people to come back into the office and lots of people simultaneously seeking new employment, then that job hop is likely to be quite difficult. At the very least, most people probably won't be able to line up a new WFH job before they either need to start going into the office or quit and risk extended unemployment. In the long run there will be more WFH opportunities than before the pandemic, but a lot of people are going to have to go into an office whether they want to or not.
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It's still shocking to me how "chill" this is. "Oh yeah, I'm about to FIRE, no big problem".
Achieving FIRE is such a mind blowing concept to me, Let alone at 25-35!!! Where I live we don't have fat six figure salaries flying around allowing us to accumulate a chunky ETF portfolio to live off of.
Be grateful for what you have achieved!
> Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.
Do you realise how the bottom ~50% of the US workforce lives [1]?! Getting paid six figures or more easily puts you in the top 10% of income earners in the US. Why are you talking as if these should be the norm? They clearly aren't by all metrics. You have such incredible benefits for the work you do, why do you believe you shouldn't feel any privilege or gratitude?
[1] https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-americ...
For those that have the ability and the desire to retire: congratulations! Please be careful!
What's FIRE in this context?
COVID has exposed how pathetic the commute-to-work experience is in comparison to working from home. A lot of people are just fine not keeping up a work wardrobe, or getting up every day to get dressed and groomed for work, or driving to the office every day. It personally takes me 45 minutes to get to work on a good day. If my employer tried to force me into the office while I could get a job elsewhere that would allow me to make around the same money to work from home, I'm gone. I'd save about $2500 in gas alone.
And for the record, I love my co-workers. Every single one is a software development veteran, professional in their day to day activities, and is motivated to producing quality work. But I'd still rather work with a knucklehead from time to time than give up the 2+ hours of daily time that going back to the office would require.
I think your circles are rather unusual, if this is true. A $900k net worth is in the 99th percentile for 30-34 year olds and 95th percentile for 35-40 year olds in the US (https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/)
Even among my anecdotal very-highly-compensated NYC tech-salary coworkers and friends, having money issues and easily sub $100k net worths is way more common than not.
I would be shocked if in that specific cohort the median net worth at 30 was less than 500 k$. And if less than 1/10 were millionaires at 30.
Just think, we could all pursue our hopes, dreams and soul satisfying pursuits, if having good health insurance wasn't directly tied to having a "good job".
Dissatisfaction will cause people to move around in the market. I don't know how much I buy the argument that people are looking for WFH, more than that they are looking to not work in a service industry which has low benefits low pay, and no chance of upward mobility.
The pandemic is giving people a chance to realize their career has stalled. I think everyone already knew that the US healthcare system was broken, but maybe people are realizing changing careers is the only way out of that bind.
Tech workers would be fine under any situation, so I don't think it's right to compare your FIRE friends with a cruise ship waiter.
It's important to note that tech workers make up no where close to 40% of all workers, and that most of the people discussed here are lower class seeking upward mobility. Being miserable is just the catalyst for seeking a way out of their situation.
1) Sense of (in)security. There is the thought of, what if my investments lose a lot of value. What if costs suddenly go up. So the number keeps shifting up. Just another x dollars and I'll retire.
2) As I get older, the thought of retiring is also starting to lose appeal. Life's priorities change and preferences change. I wanted to be able to not work and travel the world. Now that sounds some what exhausting and unanchored. Personal situation also comes into play. Single vs those in relationships. Will the partner welcome the FIRE lifestyle etc.
3) There is a bit of how society will view a 30 something with no job and no plans to get a job.
If you stop working, you risk losing both those networks.
I am far happier in my job and my career. And if my employer decides that they require people to come to the office, then I shall find a different employer who doesn't.
What I’ve noticed about the fire people is that they have very unrealistic budgets (static based on what they spend at age 30 often forgetting to include things like healthcare and other forms of insurance, as well as changes in lifestyle). Once you’re in your 40s, and you’re at the peak of your earnings, it’s actually really hard to walk away even if you’ve hit your target. I do know quite a few people first hand who have quit but only in there very late 40s or who made north of $10 million at one point or another.
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Stated preference is much noisier.
My observation is there are a lot of people who have learned to hate their boss while remote. My SF friends may be surprised that wages are resetting to Chicago and Texas levels for new workers. That may slow down some of the movement.
During the pandemic, the companies that were still hiring stepped up the bar. Maybe that was the push needed to tell people what the ramifications of this is. Now I am finally hearing from a lot of engineers: "Am I going to have to do this my whole life? I don't want to do this now let alone for the rest of my life". I have dozens of friends from Microsoft to Google plotting their exists.
If all goes well, I am out in 8 years (but things rarely go well). I have a number and once I get to it, I am out. I dont want to deal with this shit anymore
Even better, the people that are the most averse to Leetcode cramming are often the ones that will see the greatest benefit, since they usually entered their current position with a single offer some years ago, and would be getting multiple offers in a very hot market today.
I bet if HC were not employment centered, this would be much different. In the US, it's a badge of honor to have a "job with benefits". Switching jobs and not having HC benefits that are as good or cost more weighs heavy on the minds of most people.
No, people were miserable in their jobs prior to the Covid era. The Covid era just gave them the repose they needed to reframe their job experience and their relationship to their employers. That's a positive development for Americans and their employers.
I think less than 1 in 10 people who talk about FIRE have some kind of realistic expectation about FIRE (i.e. you can't stay in the USA and also live like a king)
- Mental illness.
- Uncomfortable amounts of stone. Feeling trapped by the system.
- The constant paranoid fear of other people who kind of want you dead.
- Shitting in pots.
It's pretty easy to live like a king in the US, just be homeless.
And just how true that bit is about lottery tickets being “a tax on people who are bad at math.”
Having a bunch of money means not having to have a mortgage. That’s pretty powerful by itself.
I’ve been trying for years.
You don't really know yourself until you've spent a month or two with ZERO outside obligations. Quite hard to do. I did a couple of multi-month gaps in my 30s.
Feels like most huge corporations do an executive shakeup every 5-8 years or so, and they shake some people out, but those people just get picked back up by someone else fresh off their own executive shuffle.
contradicts
> This number is meaningless without previous year trends.
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It is definitely hard for food service workers, and what not, but the powers that be really don't have much say.
During the pandemic many people also made some changes to their lives (bought a house, moved out the city, moonlight second job, started consulting remotely, etc.).
Then you throw in the crazy rise in the markets (stocks, crypto, real estate) that many people have benefited from.
Coupled with the popularity of FIRE mentality, rise of remote work, etc, it doesn't surprise me there are big changes coming.
Less than 10? I would need to know more details on this before believing it at face value. Say a FANG person makes 300k/year on average over 8 years.
That's 2.4 million pre-tax, something like 1.4M post-tax, and not enough for FIRE for most people.
Maybe if someone was early in a startup that had a massive exit, sure. But that definitely doesn't describe the typical FIRE person/FAANG worker/etc.
If the work-from-home thing has given you thoughts about what you like, now is the time to go. I see very few firms insisting on onsite work though, having interviewed with quite a few over the last few weeks. Even guys that I know would rather have people in the office and would pay them very well are feeling forced to let people work from home at least a couple of days.
Salary wise it seems like it's breaking upwards too, though of course all I have is my own offers and the word of some recruiters. There's also just a lot of firms out there who are happy to create roles for people they like, or discuss new ventures with new people.
Also, don't forget if you're going to look, absolutely everyone is interviewing remotely. You can sit at home at interviews all day until you find the job for you, something you might not be able to once more firms go back in the office.
Don't wait on your company to make a remote work plan once they've got you all back in the office. Start looking around now while they don't have a monopoly on your time. That doesn't necessarily mean taking interviews during work hours -- my previous job was 10-6 eastern, and east coast companies would happily interview me at 9, while west coast ones interviewed me at 7. Once your current company has you back in the office, they have a much stronger grasp on you, and they know it. That's why they want everyone back in the office before they talk about remote work.
But if you're not going to a company that is itself 100% remote, I'd still be wary about being the stranger that they only see online. I went with a job where I was only an hour away from the office but could still work remotely, and plan to be there once every couple months, so I still get some face time.
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Agreed on the salary uptick now. I'm not actively looking, but I'll entertain interesting companies. I've had a lot more companies say "yeah, we can do that" when I tell them I want at least $200k base (8 YOE, full stack developer) than before.
It's a lot more "we're remote right now and haven't determined our remote strategy" which like my current place generally means we'll expect you back, but might be a little more lenient on why you need to do a special WFH day.
I've done both full remote and full open office. I think being close enough to go in and get together to determine project path and then going remote to work on it seems to be the way to go. It doesn't look like my current employer believes the same way - even though they are doing very well right now and we're all remote.
A) Is this annual? As in their unvested RSUs are nearly 4x this amount
B) This is not accounting for stock price appreciation?
or do I have it entirely wrong. Two years ago on Blind I could tell people were discussing their compensation packages in wildly differing ways. It was impossible to tell if people were discussing if they signed an offer that computed a particular dollar value that was only relevant a single year and they just liked to brag about it, or if they were discussing their annual tax filings from employment, or even something else. I feel like this discrepancy translates onto Levels as well.
It's pretty rare to see an e7 offer though.
First of all, find out where the jobs are. Some board for your niche or something like that. For me it's efinancialcareers. Now efinancial is still a black hole if you try to use it to apply through, but what you're really after is the recruiter details.
You then phone up the rec, or you write to him on LinkedIn. A lot of them are crap at responding, but that's how it is. Phone a few, and convince them that you are the real deal for whatever it is he recruits for.
They'll all want an updated CV. They need it to be able to proceed, nobody will place you without one. Good news is it isn't that hard, just highlight the relevant bits for reach recruiter.
The rec will then say "I've got a job at X, Y, and Z. X is a this kind of co, Y is looking for blah..."
When they have some of those details it means they actually have something. Otherwise it's just a generic company that they will find later. By find, I mean they will forget you by the time the job comes. One guy told me straight up the ad I responded to was not a specific job, it was a honeypot to lure candidates.
So now the companies get your CVs, and they decide whether to interview. If the recruiter is good, they will interview you maybe 3/4 times. Companies often screw up their own internal hiring process and ask for CVs when they aren't ready. But the other companies should be willing to interview you. This is where you find out if the rec is crap, because a fair few of them will just not tell you anything about what happened to your CV.
It's still a numbers game. I've got over 20 recruiters listed on my Trello, most of them did nothing useful for me.
It's probably worth cultivating some relationships with the recruiters. You learn a lot about what the market is doing for free from them.
https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Technical+Product+Managers+%26...
Moreso, the rise of fully remote role has opened up our ideas about our current living situation. The real estate market in our city is shattered and broken. So we will also move 60 miles south to a different city... before the pandemic I was remote and missed the office. Post pandemic... fuck the office and 1+ hour commutes purely because the city, state, and country have mismanaged infrastructure for 20 years.
Some are more hands on though and prefer social learning ("show me how to do it..."). To each their own, but I personally learn faster when left alone than when someone tries to put me through their "course".
My commute is 5 miles. 30 minutes by bike (on a few sketchy roads) or 15 minutes by car. I need to time out which is actually faster end-to-end. I setup an office in my house pre-pandemic (It's gaming room with dual monitors on a desktop PC I built in college) 3x the space, a couch and much closer walk to the bathroom. I'm sad to give it up now.
They are, to paint with a very broad brush, folks who all worked in food service, retail, or other front-line sales industries. The forced time off last year made them realize they were killing themselves for not very much money, and they're refusing to go back to those employers.
But it's the $300 in weekly payments that is stopping people from returning to work, if you ask business owners in the area.
There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don't know why.
Largely because business owners are pushing the "$300/month is making everybody lazy" narrative. There doesn't appear to be much evidence it's true, at least not to the extend business owners would have us believe.
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* I am currently employed with great benefits. If I am going to throw that away there needs to be something of value in exchange: leadership position, architecture, or some other increase of responsibilities. I wasn’t seeing this.
* If your primary platform or language is JavaScript everybody wants a tool jockey. They claim to want somebody full stack. But when you really press for details the really want somebody to do react on the front end and play around with their cloud provider. The services piece in the middle is where things get strained in a full stack interview. If tools are the direction of work I have already lost interest. Why would I want to give up stable employment with great benefits to wire tools together? I would rather just stare out the window.
* The idea of a senior engineer is incredibly convoluted. It sounds like people want somebody who can mentor in a vacuum. You can only mentor so much about dicking around with tools. If you try to mentor past that and the culture is just go dick around with tools you are either mentoring too much or not enough. Either way you are a horrible senior incompatible to the new organization. Worse is when they ask you to guide and train junior developers without leadership support. Really if that should work beyond vague hints you need a title. Excellent juniors have a passion for learning but many juniors aren’t excellent, just want a paycheck, and feel insecure when challenged.
From going through the exact same conversation several times in a row I get the impression many employers kind of know what they want to build, kind of guess at what they need, and completely guess at what qualifies as execution planning but cannot put any of that together into a single vision.
IMHO, the "all JavaScript tech stack, connected together by a cloud provider via tooling" pattern is probably among the faster ways to get an idea from inside someone's head and in front of customers, all of the longer term problems aside.
To me personally, the "challenge" comes from being able to do all of that quickly and seamlessly, basically solid execution becomes the fun part.
Oh, also I would love to make a bunch of money relatively quickly. :)
Otherwise, I agree, it's all of: fucking boring; frustrating; and unrewarding. But, it's also most of the market for developers. :-/
If you current approach is entirely dependent upon tools it will be boxed in to a set of configurations and flexibility is lost. From what I have seen on HN the greatest challenge for most early stage startups is finding product-market fit, which means you need to pivot at a moment's notice. That ability to pivot is far more significant than whether you can have a website up in 2 days versus 2 weeks.
I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing.
edit: thank you all for advice, encouragement as well as for cautious pessimism. By the amount of upvotes Im hoping Im not the only one doing this. See you out there!
You hear a heck of a lot more about it on HN than happens in reality.
Maybe I don't hang out with the trust fund crowd enough but I don't know ANYONE who's taken a "gap year" where they weren't doing something for ~40hr/wk in order to make a buck. I know a few people who didn't jump right into career stuff after college but even they did low pay large applicant pool type jobs at least tangentially related to their careers (e.g. working as basically unskilled labor on tourist fishing charters in Miami before getting a real entry level job on a container ship). Heck, even the people who took a year off before college were doing stuff tangentially related to their career/skillset in that time (e.g. working for geek squad prior to going to school for CE). I know a couple people who went from full time to part time or to less demanding jobs in their field prior to retirement. I know a couple people who did jobs not related to their vocational training for less than a year after they got out of the military but that was more of a stopgap to keep a roof over their head. I don't know anyone who's gone from full time to part time or less unless it's part of a career transition or approach to retirement. I'm sure there's someone somewhere who's managed to pay their rent by waiting tables and stripping for a grand total of 15hr/wk and spent the rest of the time doing art or writing a book or something. I'm sure there's someone who's banked a ton of money and taken a year off in the middle of their career. I don't know anyone who's pulled something like that off.
I spent 3 months as a research assistant in Australia and used savings from that period to travel in South-East Asia and South America for 6 months or so. Shortly after graduating, having saved a bit as a student (again - Europe, I managed without student debt, having done web development next to my studies), I went to a conference in Taiwan with my MSc thesis and traveled back home over land. Then after working a little bit on my first job again I traveled, hitchhiking to/through the Middle East and Russia.
It's all very doable if you don't spend a lot - during many of these trips I spent $400-$1000/month.
Highly recommend it, traveling in Turkey/Iran/Oman/Georgia/Russia/Ukraine definitely shaped my perspective on the world.
You're on a discussion board filled with software developers and tech employees generally. The vast majority of such workers make a lot of money. If you're working in tech and you can't bank enough to take 6m-1yr off, you're doing your finances wrong. It doesn't require a trust fund to avoid the hedonic treadmill and save up.
I've met people who do it on a 6-months basis - 6 months travelling, 6 months earning. They don't make much, their career is somewhat stalled, it would have probably ended when/if they had a kid, but they did it. They were conscious that they were sacrificing something (money, comforts) in exchange for this lifestyle.
Most the advice is quite the opposite (and I would agree with them). To me, this really shows just how toxic the control is across the labor force. Job mobility is about the only vote or voice you have if you're in the labor force and if empty positions can be readily filled, you have no voice. The only reason things are interesting now is because the mass layoffs and turnover haven't been well stagged due to the pandemic so labor has more leverage. When true unemployment returns to norms, positions are largely re-filled, and attrition begins to follow traditional rates, the voice of the labor market voting will their feet will again fall on deaf ears and your voice will again disappear in the noise. It would take another global catastrophe to change this balance and give labor a voice again.
We all know that once old, the amount of money earned/saved will mean absolutely nothing in terms of happiness/achievement. Work achievements for office type jobs mean mean even less. The life lived well will mean everything. So some act accordingly when/if possible.
I haven't done gap year myself, but did a shorter variant - 2 times 3 months backpacking around India and Nepal. Remote Himalaya in the north, swimming in coral reefs on Amdamans, Thar desert in the west, and thousands of years of history, culture and people to meet everywhere in between. I still barely scratched the surface of what this place can offer.
Literally the best decision in my life. It changed me for the better. It motivated me to make changes in my career, go for consulting, move to Switzerland etc.
Have met tons of people from all over the world who were like this - traveling like this for 3-24 months, and then continuing work/study/beginning someplace else.
These trips I've done when having a pretty high mortgage and very little savings, and they both meant losing at least 2 salaries each time while expenses mounted. No rich family to cover for me anyhow if I would hit the financial wall. Still well worth the risk. If one doesn't have kids yet, there is practically nothing to lose with doing this, just gain.
I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of people taking a gap year, especially people in tech. The industry pays well relatively early and there is a surplus of jobs. If you keep your expenses low relative to your salary, don't let your lifestyle inflate beyond your means, and are fortunate enough not to be burdened with debt, health problems, or other large expenses, a gap year seems completely doable.
I think failure to save money is by far the most likely reason sabbaticals are uncommon, though I've been told by hiring managers they're more common in tech than you'd think. There's also probably some stigma against being unemployed, especially in professional circles, as well as fear of the dreaded "resume gap." As far as I can tell, that concern is fairly overblown for those in tech as well.
While I did figure out I didn't love single handing a sailboat long term I don't regret any part of that year. I came back significantly happier than I was.
It used to be that it was more a thing for women, but that probably changed since draft was abandoned (before that the gap year for men would usually have been military service or alternative civilian service)
What you can't do is continue to have an expensive quality of life if you're no longer producing income.
I was really burnt out. But I'm not sure that taking the time did anything for me. I was a little stressed about the "unknown" the whole time and I mostly wish I had left that money in my savings.
Your mileage may vary.
There are other cultures like this. I’ve seen kids from Europe doing a gap year staying in hostels for very little (they sometimes do some light work for the hostel to get a free place to stay)
It's sad really. As a young person this is the time to be able to do it. Often as you get older life gets in the way. I've been wanting to do it ever since I found out about it but every time something else has gotten in the way. If you're young and reading this, and everything has aligned for you, take a gap year or two.
When I finished university, I had a few weeks between graduation and my start date at a well known Midwestern embedded electronics company. I had a $7k signing bonus and I found a $500 round trip ticket to Rome, so I went to Rome. While I was there, I learned about the world of backpacking and hostels. I ended up spending 6 weeks in Europe before returning home. During that time I decided that travel was something I wanted to pursue in my life.
The salary at my entry level SWE job was $58k, which was pretty modest. I didn’t buy a new car. I didn’t buy a new house. I cooked most meals at home and I brought lunch to work. I tracked my expenses and budget using Mint, and set a goal to save $30k so I could leave and travel in SE Asia where I calculated the daily burn rate should be around $30/day. After three years I hit my savings goal and bought a one way ticket to Hawaii, then from Hawaii to Thailand. I ended up spending over a year outside of the country and returned home with a $10k cushion to get back on my feet.
The biggest leg up I had was graduating with $2000 in student loan debt, but that was made possible mostly through merit based scholarships. No trust fund.
I inspired a friend to do the same thing, except with a destination of Australia on a working holiday visa. Also no trust fund, just living below his means and saving over time.
My advice to you is to find a way to do the things you want to do instead of limiting yourself with beliefs that only the ultra-rich can take time off from work to pursue personal passions.
In my industry, and the one my wife works in, if you have a gap year it's a red flag that makes potential employers wonder if you got fired from your last job and just aren't listing it, or did time in prison, or are simply unreliable.
It's great that in the tech bubble people don't think much about gap years. But in the real world, they can doom your chances of getting a new job.
Especially since these days you don't get to explain the gap since your application is vetted, filtered, and ranked by a computer and not a person.
Anyway, I took a gap time at age 36 for a 3 months trip in South America. And this allowed me to take an turn in my career when I came back.
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If long-distance hiking appeals, I'd be happy to discuss it.
Long-distance hiking isn't for everyone but
Good luck out there.
Forests are wonderful. I grew up around forests, playing in them as a child. A few years ago while day hiking in a forest I came to a Sun-warmed opening in pine barrens from amidst taller pines. That specific scent of the ground and the pines etc., the heat and the wind -- all these, but mostly the strong scent, took me vividly back to my childhood. I remembered so many things as if I were there again, I saw these memories just flowing at me. For a moment, I was transported back to my grandparents place at a summer when I was 6-8 years old. I felt how much they loved me and what a good and carefree place I had been in.
For some time, I stood there in awe with my mouth open, trying to process what just happened. It was such a powerful influx of memories.
I don't know if you've experienced something like this, but I hope you will! Maybe some years from now your hike will come back to you.
Good luck on the AT!
Trying to figure out how much training / prep one needs to do. I want to do long distance cycling, I am not concerned about the stamina. I am concerned about camping in the wild, packing and repairing the bicycle when it breaks.
For me, I went with "Take one great photo a day."
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Bonus points, if you have all your stuff packed somewhere and not have to pay any rent. But it depends what you want, if you like your home, keep it. Have projects in your home ...
There are lots of things to be done. Doing nothing is also fine for a while, but gets booring very soon and puts you in lethargic state ... wasting your time.
Doing nothing doesn’t get boring for everyone. And it’s my time not yours so who’s to say what a waste is?
My biggest advice is to do what you want and don’t feel like you have to live up to some HN-gap-year fantasy. You might regret sitting in your apartment surfing the internet (I didnt) but you might also regret traveling. It’s your time. Do what you want.
I can tell you as a non-elite, middle-class American that I've almost never heard of someone taking a gap year after beginning professional work. The one case that comes to mind was an ex's father who was burnt out on his accountant career. He took a year to follow his dreams on music-related stuff, which didn't pan out in terms of turning a passion into a career, and he went back to being an accountant (also, after causing his wife and kids some stress related to running low on money).
I did however take a 6 week gap between jobs a few years back. I think things like that are common enough. I flew to Costa Rica, intending to spend a month backpacking around the country ... and honestly I got kind of bored after 2 weeks so I flew home early. Then I hopped in the car and drove cross-country at my own pace, seeing sights that I wanted to see, etc. Absolutely one of my favorite memories and I'd love to do something similar again.
The important thing to remember is that this is for your growth, happiness, and well-being. You set the rules for your time off. If you travel the whole time or stay at home, or a mix, that's your call. If you do something to try to set yourself up for your next opportunity professionally or you completely stay away anything related to your profession, that's up to you. Don't follow a path just because you think it'll look good on Instagram or because you think it'll sound cool when you talk about it at parties in the future. (Or do, if those are high enough priorities for you). Good luck!
Personally, six weeks sounds more like an extra-long vacation. I always took four to six months off before looking for a new job, or when on-job an unpaid month or two every other year. But that's definitively nowhere near the norm, many people don't understand it. I usually end up coding 20h per week on geek projects or random open source stuff. After six months I predictably get bored with it.
I rarely end up doing the project I planned to do. So if you want any advice from me: Don't force yourself to do what you thought you wanted to do, before you had time. Look around and don't feel guilty for following that new interest you just discovered.
I've never had enough time off between (my few) jobs since grad school. The circumstances have never been quite right. I did get a 3-4 week vacation the last time and that was mostly because I had done everything except pull the trigger while waiting to see if an offer came through--then pushed things out as far as I could.
I actually had a month off the prior time as well but that was because of a post-9/11 layoff. As it turned out a conversation I had with someone I knew pretty much the following day panned out. But I didn't know that of course and it wasn't the time to just head off and vacation.
I didn't do a gap year either. I left education at 16 and immediately went into FTE and have been there ever since (for longer than I dare count) and now that I am all wrapped up in a mortgage and kids I'm not sure I'll be taking a gap year any time soon (voluntarily, anyway!)
FWIW I have worked with several colleagues who took a gap year and never stopped. They pick up remote contract work along their travels and continue living the life of a modern day nomad. Not one of them is unhappy :)
Maybe not this directly, but I expect more people quitting "megacorp" jobs, will lead to another big wave of "innovation" in tech in the next few years as people spin up small companies to 'scratch that itch' they've had for a while.
The one major issue of taking some time off right now to travel is that it is incredibly difficult to do so. Many countries are still closed, or if open, have some sort of curfew. In the US, national parks are overwhelmed with tourists. If traveling solo, social distancing (either laws or new culture) makes it difficult to connect with strangers.
He didn't notice any long term career effects although he had to re-establish himself somewhat with new people and projects that had appeared in his absence.
I have not met a single woman who would compare maternity leave to a travel leave and a “great” time.
Infants are a ton of work, and between recovering from the birthing process (a vaginal tear with a few stitches is considered one of the best outcomes), learning how to breastfeed, only sleeping 2 hours at a time due to breastfeeding, diastesis recti ruining your abs and making your core weak, pain from clogged milk ducts, pumping breast milk for storage since the US does not provide adequate leave so the kid has to go in daycare, hemorrhoids for a good portion of women, etc.
I have no doubt anyone who has been through this would rather work an office job for 6 months.
I do not consider this time to be "gap year", but rather an investment in, and a reward for, myself. Why do I need such luxuries? Because time is short and nothing is destined. None of us are guaranteed to make it to retirement age. My Dad died when he was 54; my brother when he was 53. My sister survived her heart attack when she was 60 - luckily it happened when she was at work; she was a cleaner at a hospital.
Keep a roof over your head, make sure you have enough food to live on. Don't leave it until the last minute to start looking for paid work. Most importantly, enjoy your time away from the capitalist treadmill - with good fortune this can become an investment in yourself that you'll never regret!
I’m about 15 months into my “gap year,” similar story (except no immigration). I traveled on the cheap, switched careers, found a new city I love (and is way cheaper), and settled down with my gf.
Word of warning: depending on what kind of friends and family you have, you might lose some people along the way. Taking a leap like that brought out a new side of people I thought I knew. Most were supportive, but some not at all. Focus on the “keepers” instead of the “haters,” stay positive, and enjoy it!
Financial Independence Retire Early
Was one of the best, most happy periods in my life.
It made me more focused on trying to reach early “retirement” so I can work fulltime on my hobbies. Hopefully I can achieve this goal before I’m 45 years old.
During the early Covid lock down was the best time. Had a really good sleep. Learned cooking. Biked with my son everyday. Walked in the evening everyday.
Right before the covid-19, I visited my parents for a month in India and didn't do anything. Screen time reduced to 1-2 hrs a day - hardly any emails, no business calls, no Reddit, no HN or no news. That was the best time. Slept from 10pm - 6am everyday.
1. Cycle Eurovelo 6
2. Drive through the Pan American Highway
3. Learn different things at different places, Muay Thai in Thailand, surfing in Bali, Kali in the Philipines
4. Just travel doing nothing for a few months and then try 12 month 12 startups or something.
I am going to start off my gap year with full time skiing and working on side projects on off/rest days and evenings.
IMO what you find out is a year is a long time without work from a time perspective. Hope you enjoy your year off!
As a Westerner, I have never taken a gap year but I never met anyone who took one and wish they didn't. If you can make it work, take it, especially after the Pandemic because it's going to be an awesome time to travel.
In tech, we luckily have the luxury to take time off and recover when we need to.
I worked on some closed source personal projects and worked on getting into shape. When I was ready to return, the employer didn't really care that I had taken time off.
Yep, that's what I'm seeing already.
Financially incentivized OSS (much of which falls under the label 'crypto') is very attractive if you're in the top percentiles of competence & drive.
Has there ever been an open, competitive, global, beurocracy-free, low barrier to entry market like this?
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I took a 1 year break and have had to answer a simple recruiter/interview inquiry regarding it for the next 5 years. I don't think it ever eliminated me from consideration but it was more like a necessary precaution. Not so great answers would include:
* Anything beginning with "uh uh uh". Answer confidently.
* "I was searching for work the whole time and just couldn't pass interviews"
* criminal activity
* anything indicating a bad work ethic or difficult employee
* apathy, indifference, numb, lazy. Even if you felt that way the whole time, LIE. You took a year off, you want to look like you had an undying passion for something every day even a hobby.
Quit my SE role to drive across the country with my cousin. Definitely recommend taking time off to pursue anything you want to do for yourself.
I honestly try to maximize humanity, unhappy people can't do good work.
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.
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...
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.
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 :-).
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.
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%.
Nope. Not true in tech at all.
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_
"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."
(Turns out the grass is pretty much the same in most places.)
The prediction isn’t a massive wave of unemployment. It’s people switching jobs. They will still be earning money, just perhaps elsewhere.
Imagine if I told you that the number of people "thinking of buying a Tesla" had gone up dramatically. Now, most people can't afford a Tesla, so no, not everyone is going to buy a Tesla. But if overall the proportion of people thinking about it went up, you wouldn't be surprised if the number of Tesla sales went up soon, and would probably be surprised if it fell.
What I'm saying here is that it would be weird if those two variables are completely independent.
That’s largely because of status quo bias. People don’t like to make any major changes to their life situation unless prompted. But if a company exists on ending the WFH arrangements that people have become accustomed to over the past year, all bets are out the window.
I found a new position that's 100% remote, I put in my notice at my current job the week before last, and my last day is coming up this week.
It's kind of bittersweet: I'm leaving just before my fifth anniversary here, and this is the only company where I've even made it to three years, much less five, but it is what it is. I like what I do, and I like my coworkers, but I just can't go back to working in an office after spending the last year working from home, so it's time for me to move on.